The exhibition includes Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy, 1972 (17:24 min, b&w, sound), Jonas’s first single-screen tape, which combines her investigation of the representation of femininity using masks, mirrors, and other props, with video’s properties of instant playback. For Good Night Good Morning, 1976 (11:38 min, b&w, sound), the artist recorded herself greeting the camera every night and morning over three different periods of time, thus employing the mechanism to chart a mundane ritual that is rendered simultaneously public and private.

For Songdelay, 1973 (18:35 min, b&w, sound, 16 mm film on video) Jonas staged a performance on a large empty lot in lower Manhattan with a cast including artists and dancers such as Gordon Matta-Clark and Steve Paxton. The choreographed series of movements, delayed sounds, and various props introduce elements carried forward throughout Jonas’s work. The film Mirage (1976, 31 min, b&w, silent, 16 mm film on video) shows the artist executing a number of signature, enigmatic chalk drawings, and erasing them immediately after.

In the 1980s, Jonas’s work turned towards more narrative forms, inspired by ancient myths, fairy tales, and literature. Using a range of stylized special effects, Double Lunar Dogs, 1984 (24:04 min, color, sound), based on a science fiction story by Robert Heinlein, envisions the inhabitants of a space ship lost in space for generations.

Volcano Saga 1989, (28 min, color, sound), originally produced for television broadcast, stages a retelling of an ancient Icelandic saga while bringing its characters and stories into the present. Lines in the Sand (2002- 2005), the final and most recent work in the exhibition, is a documentation of Jonas’s celebrated performance taking inspiration for H.D.’s poem Helen of Egypt, first staged for Documenta 11 in 2002.