Joan Jonas unveils first Korean museum exhibition at Nam June Paik Art Center

Video art pioneer's Korean debut follows the relaunch of the Nam June Paik Prize, now expanded with more globally focused selection system

"Empty Rooms" by Joan Jonas at Nam June Paik Art Center (Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone)

American artist Joan Jonas, a seminal figure who fuses video, performance and drawing into a new visual language, has opened her first museum exhibition in Korea at the Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.

The exhibition, “Joan Jonas: The More-than-Human World,” opened Thursday at the museum — the world’s only institution dedicated to the late Korean artist Nam June Paik. Jonas received the eighth Nam June Paik Prize last year, and the exhibition is presented as part of the prize program.

“Paik emphasized media’s power to connect the world, while Jonas explores peace on a more expansive level — moving across the human, the material and the immaterial,” said curator Kim Yoon-seo. “Jonas was not only a pioneer of early video and performance art, but also brought a distinct perspective on femininity and identity that continues to shape artists today.”

"Beautiful Dog" by Joan Jonas (Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone)

In her early career, Jonas intersected with Paik as part of New York’s experimental art scene — and as actual neighbors.

“Jonas and Paik shared the early experimental atmosphere of video art as literal neighbors in New York — their homes faced each other on the same street, close enough that they could see each other’s windows,” Kim said.

A key highlight of the exhibition is the large-scale installation “Empty Rooms,” in which Jonas transforms personal grief into a poetic landscape of drifting paper, bare trees and shadow play. Sculptures, drawings and video elements intertwine to explore themes of loss, memory and longing.

The piece reflects Jonas’ experience of losing many close friends by age 88. “Each person leaves an empty room when they leave my life, and that is what this piece is based on,” reads her statement on the gallery wall.

Sheets of cream-colored paper hang lightly in the air, while a nearby wall is filled with dozens of drawings of a bare tree. The accompanying video features piano compositions by longtime collaborator Jason Moran paired with a shadow play performed by young girls.

"Wind" by Joan Jonas (Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone)

Among the 41 works on view are pivotal early experiments from the late 1960s, including “Wind” and “Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy.”

“Wind,” a silent film shot on a Long Island beach in New York in 1968, treats the wind as an active force guiding the performers’ movements — an early signal of Jonas’ enduring interest in nature, the body and elemental motifs.

The Nam June Paik Prize, founded in 2009, was relaunched in 2024 with an updated selection system designed to strengthen its international relevance and more fully reflect Paik’s experimental spirit in today’s contemporary art landscape, according to the museum.

The show runs through March 29.