Joyce Joumaa is a video artist based between Beirut and Montreal. After growing up in Lebanon, she pursued a BFA in Film Studies at Concordia University in Canada. Her work focuses on microhistories within Lebanon as a way to understand how past structures inform the present moment. Central to her work is an interest towards the political charge inscribed in spaces and the social psychology that unfolds out of this tension.
Her current research revolves around the post colonial education system in Lebanon and the maritime border conflict with Israel.
Her work has shown at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, FOFA Gallery and Dazibao. She is the recipient of the 2021-2022 Emerging Curator Residency Program at the CCA, the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
Curatorial - Selected Projects
Selected Collaborations
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Photo Work
Residencies
Writings
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For CV, Studio Visits, Portfolio or Commissions
2023, Film
To Remain In The No Longer examines the architectural, social and political significance of Niemeyer’s fairground. Through archival materials, interviews with local people, 16mm and digital images of the buildings as they stand today, the film reflects on both the fraught history of this site and its connection to the ongoing financial crisis in Lebanon today.
2023, Video
Mutable Cycles explores the influx in solar energy in Lebanon following the current economic crisis. Tracing the scientific trajectory of the earth around the sun, the narration is a reflection on the notion of cyclicality within crises that emerged within the contemporary political history of the country.
2021, Video
Merging, Dissecting, Collecting is a video work that explores the concept of the reversed gaze. Using the binocular viewfinder that is thought to be a colonial tool, the images interplay between footage that were shot in Istanbul, Turkey and Tripoli, Lebanon. The former being a place where colonization emerged and the latter being a place where colonization was practiced. Juxtaposed with the sound of history lessons from school textbooks which are used in Lebanon, the work aims at revisiting the history of colonization by the Ottoman Empire in present time and how it is interpreted in contemporary educational knowledge.
2019, Video
During meetings that are held at the United Nations, speeches in foreign languages are heard by the attendees through a simultaneous interpretation – a process which attempts to translate on the fly and without breaks what is being said. The core identity of the speaker's performance is replaced with the mechanical voice of the interpreter, denying any correlation between words and emotions. This video explores the tension between the real voice intonation of the speaker and the one of the translator while questioning how such a phenomenon can affect the cognitive and emotional reception of world leaders who are responsible of resolving global political issues. Speech written and performed by Nadia Mourad Basee Taha at a UN General Assembly.
