Description

Joan Jonas. Mountain Owl (2016). 7 colour screen print on Khadi paper. 35 x 25 cm [13.78 x 99.84 inches]. Edition of 50 works, signed and numbered. Joan Jonas' edition for the Whitechapel Gallery Mountain Owl, 2016, depicts an owl derived from one of the artist's water colours. The owl is a familiar character in Jonas' installations. Her frame of reference continues to span the folkloric and the canonical, touching on animism, myth and social rituals that are common to all world cultures. She draws regularly from literary influences – from Dante's epic Divine Comedy to the Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness' writings on the spiritual aspects of nature, which served as an important reference point for They Come to Us without a Word (2015), her recent critically-acclaimed work for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (9 May – 22 November 2015).