Constance DeJong

The Hunter College Art Galleries are pleased to present Constance DeJong, a survey exhibition marking the artist’s first solo show at an institutional gallery. For over four decades, DeJong has created experimental prose writing, multi-media spoken text works, and user-navigated digital projects. Well known for her contributions to New York’s downtown performance art and avant-garde music scene in the 1970s and ’80s, DeJong is considered one of the progenitors of media art, or “time-based media.” This exhibition highlights DeJong’s hybrid mode of art-making, featuring work from the past three decades and debuting several new works by the artist.

On the occasion of the exhibition, an artist-designed publication has been produced that includes texts by distinguished writers, artists, and editors, as well as a previously unpublished text by DeJong. The publication will be available at the Leubsdorf Gallery for purchase for 30 USD and is also available for purchase here.

Constance DeJong is curated by Sarah Watson and Jocelyn Spaar with Lazarus Graduate Curatorial Fellow Sigourney Schultz.

This exhibition is made possible by a gift from the Legere Family Foundation in honor of daughter Elizabeth Legere (Hunter College MA 2017), and in appreciation of Hunter College distinguished lecturer Constance DeJong and Joachim Pissarro, Bershad Professor of Art History. The Hunter College Art Galleries also extend our gratitude to the David Bershad Family Foundation, the Susan V. Bershad Charitable Fund, Inc., Carol and Arthur Goldberg, the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, Joan Lazarus, and the Leubsdorf Fund for their sustained support of the galleries’ programming.

Enter through Hunter College West Building (south west corner of Lexington Ave. and 68th Street)
Gallery hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11–5pm

About the artist
Constance DeJong is a New York-based artist who has exhibited and performed locally and internationally.  Her work has been presented at Renaissance Society, Chicago; the Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; The Wexner Center, Columbus, OH; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and in New York at The Kitchen, Threadwaxing Space, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Dia Center for the Arts. She composed the libretto for the Philip Glass opera Satyagraha in 1983, which has been staged at opera houses worldwide, including the Metropolitan Opera, NY; The Netherlands National Opera, Rotterdam, NL, and The Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY. She has permanent audio-text installations in Beacon, NY, London, and Seattle. She has published several books of fiction, including her celebrated Modern Love (published by Standard Editions with Dorothea Tanning in 1977 and reissued by Primary Information/Ugly Duckling Presse in 2017), I.T.I.L.O.E (Top Stories, 1983), and Speakchamber (Bureau, 2013).