Constance DeJong

Artist-in-Residence

Constance DeJong spent her time at the Gardner Museum working on a novel, and performed a work-in-progress titled Articles of Faith. The performance related to her encounters with Buddhist works of art in the Museum’s collection as well as fictional objects from her writing, and addressed the complicated relationships people have with the objects around them.

Constance DeJong has cultivated a career as a writer and as a performance, video, and new media artist since the late 1970s. Modern Love, her first novel, was published in 1978; she then adapted the book into a 60-minute radio text. Famed contemporary composer Philip Glass wrote original music (Modern Love Waltz) for this serialized radio novel. Modern Love was reissued in 2017. In 1980, DeJong paired up once more with Glass, this time on the libretto and book for his opera Satyagraha. In the late 1980s, DeJong began working with video artist Tony Oursler on a number of projects. Joyride TM (1988), one of their first collaborations, was included in the 1989 Whitney Biennial.

DeJong is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1980, 1986) and a New York Foundation for the Arts New Genres grant in 1990. Her published works include Five (1986) and I.T.I.L.O.E. (1993), and her fiction has been widely anthologized. DeJong has performed at many prestigious venues, including the Renaissance Society, Chicago; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and Artists Space, New York.