Drawing in Circles

39 minutes 39 seconds

Drawing in Circles WHY? Performances:
Saturday, March 18, 2023 4pm
Friday, March 24, 2023 7pm
Saturday, March 25, 2023 4pm

Joan Jonas’ and Eiko Otake’s collaborative project, Drawing in Circles was on view at Castelli Gallery March 14 – April 1, 2023. This exhibition, with three accompanying live performances, marked a historic collaboration for the artists and a unique partnership between Castelli Gallery and Danspace Project.

In private conversations that started in 2018, Joan and Eiko discovered shared influences including Japanese theater, film, dance, and literature as well as an intense interest in one another’s divergent processes with regard to live performance and video. In 2019, they began experimenting in Jonas’ studio both in New York and in Nova Scotia. During the pandemic, Danspace’s director and curator Judy Hussie-Taylor invited Eiko and Joan first to a public conversation in 2020 then to collaborate in 2021 on a video With the Earth at My Waistline.

Drawing in Circles, the installation, featured With the Earth at My Waistline and more work by each artist offering insights into their processes with regard to improvisation, collaboration, time, space, sound, object, and image.

The performances ran approximately 30 minutes and was followed by a conversation with the artists.