Jolanda Jansen: Persevering in solutude

Jolanda Jansen (NL, 1976) graduated in 2005 from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague; since her academy years she counts with a vertiginous trajectory having shown her work nationally and internationally. “Solitude” is her first solo show at Witzenhausen Gallery Amsterdam. Jansen  is undoubtedly a pur sang performance artist in the line of Marina Abramovich’s work. Her body is her medium, her means of communication: the object and subject of her own work, as she states: “I’m very conscious of my ‘bodily physicality’, including its attractiveness and unattractiveness and the reactions of people to my body”.

Her work explores the boundries of the body, as well as it challenges its limitations: on the one hand physical resistance is at stake, on the other, the body’s tenssion created by movement and its relation to space and other phenomena. In the series “Perseverance” we are confronted with the stretch of pain: how much can our body take? How long before we admit defeat? Can we become our own live savers?. A second series “Two soli”, brings forward the idea of solitude, of her sole presence and struggle in a space as we witness, from the safe distance of our voyeuristic position, how she moves, falls, crashes, etc. Both series comprise the idea of endurance regarding both physical and psycological pain. Solitude and perseverance: there is a little bit of both in each series: perseverance in solitude and solitude in perseverance. The effect is felt in our gut; it is raw, sometimes suffocating and it accepts no half answers.

In order to carry out her work, Jansen takes into account three forms of representation which explore different sets of relations: to herself, to an audience, to the camera and to different spaces. These result in: performative videos staged in front of the intimacy of a camera, live performances with an audience and site-specific performative videos. Her body engages therefore with different sorts of entities, transcending the idea of mere personal exorcism. By creating different strategies of work, Jansen not only widens the scope of possibilities and results within her own research topics but she also rescues the performer and performance as a complex form of art with a history and a relation not only to an individual’s act but also to the significance of her presence in relation to a broader context.

Caridad Botella Lorenzo