In 1970 a young New York artist stood naked before an audience, inspecting her body with a small round mirror. "Mirror Check" was Joan Jonas's silent commentary on women's fixation with self-image, and it helped establish her reputation as a pioneer of performance art. The artist, now 78, is opening her biggest exhibition ever at HangarBicocca, a former locomotive factory outside Milan, which Pirelli, an Italian tyremaker, has turned into an art space that resembles Tate Modern. The show comes just months before Ms Jonas will represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. Like a number of women artists before her, including Louise Bourgeois and Yayoi Kusama, she is achieving art-world stardom late in life. Ms Jonas took up performance from the outset, eager to find an artistic language that was fresh. Drawing inspiration from avant-garde dance, she developed her own repertoire of movements. At first she used mirrors a lot. Then after a visit to Japan she started including masks and the hypnotic gestures of Noh theatre in her work. And she began filming her performances, using the footage both live and for subsequent installations. In her first video piece, "Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy" (1972), she performed suggestively wearing a mask she bought in a sex shop.
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