Joan Jonas Wins Nam June Paik Prize 2024
Joan Jonas, Mirror Piece I (1969). Performance view. Bard College, Annandale-on Hudson, New York, 1969. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery.
Korea’s Nam June Paik Art Center announced that it will award the eighth Nam June Paik Prize to American artist Joan Jonas.
The award goes to an artist whose creativity, experimentation, and innovation has promoted understanding and contributed to contemporary art and world peace.
Frances Morris, a professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul and former director of Tate Modern, is the chair of the prize’s jury. She said, ‘Jonas not only played a key role in shaping early video and performance art but continues to explore urgent new terrain, most recently creating immersive installations that explore themes of ecology, landscape and kinship between humans and non-human species at a time of climate breakdown.’
The award ceremony will take place on 28 November at Nam June Paik Art Center, just south of Seoul. Jonas will receive a prize of KRW 50 million (U.S. $35,600) and a trophy. Nam June Paik Art Center will host Jonas’s first solo museum exhibition in Korea from November 2025.
Joan Jonas was born in New York in 1936. Among her achievements, she represented the United States at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and held a solo retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York earlier this year.
Jonas said, ‘I am honoured to receive this prize, especially to remember Nam June, a great artist. It will be a pleasure to work with Nam June Paik Art Center on the show in 2025.’
Previous winners of the Nam June Paik Prize include Trevor Paglen (2018), Haroon Mirza (2014), and Doug Aitken (2012). —[O]
Main image: Joan Jonas, Mirror Piece I (1969). Performance view. Bard College, Annandale-on Hudson, New York, 1969. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery.
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