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BIOGRAPHY

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Jil Guyon is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of visual art and live performance. Her work has been called "new, dramatic, beautifully executed" (Ms. Magazine) and "moving, an emotional labyrinth" (Die Presse, Vienna).

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Guyon's productions have been presented at theaters, cinemas, museums, galleries, and concert halls worldwide—including Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, the Queens Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image, La MaMa, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Selected by filmmaker Guy Maddin for the Toronto Urban Film Festival, her performance video Widow screened across the Toronto mass transit system to more than two million viewers per day. Her critically acclaimed multimedia dance-theater piece, At the Borders of Eternity, based on the Diary of Anne Frank, was staged at WUK Wien (Vienna) during a brief period when the far-right took political power in Austria. It was televised throughout the country and was the first theatrical work granted exclusive use of the diary. The video recording is preserved in the Kulturarchiv Wien. Her performance video Desert Widow is held in the collections of the Centre National de la Danse and La Maison de la Danse de Lyon, France.

 

Guyon has collaborated and performed with many notable artists such as video/performance pioneer Joan Jonas, choreographer Noemie Lafrance, vocalist Helga Davis, singer/songwriter Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls), and the satirical butoh group Celeste Hastings and The Butoh Rockettes.

 

Jil is a Lumiere prize (Canada) nominee and a recipient of the Tarkovski grant and numerous awards in experimental film. She was previously Curatorial Associate at Neue Galerie New York where she designed and wrote the Schiele and Contemporary Culture section of the Egon Schiele catalogue raisonné that accompanied the exhibition. She holds an MFA in painting and art history from Hunter College where she studied with art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss, and sculptor Robert Morris.

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MISSION

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I consider art homeopathic—a healing poison. In my image-based movement experiments for stage, chosen sites, and new media, I explore the dark regions of the female psyche to reveal an unsettling, absolute beauty. Working from my subconscious, I eschew singular intent in favor of a nonlinear visual narrative that combines autobiography with deep presence and meticulously crafted movement. Through this descent into the unknown, a path clears for an experience of empathy between myself and the audience—allowing each viewer to bring their personal history, current preoccupations and future vision into the work.

 

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