Joyce Joumaa

Joyce Joumaa is a video artist and writer 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 practice 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 was a finalist for the 2023 Prix Pierre Ayot and the recipient of the 2023 Bourse Plein-Sud. In 2022 she was the recipient of the Emerging Curator Residency at the CCA Canadian Centre for Architecture. 
Her 16mm film To Remain in the no Longer (2023) has been screened at MUDAC (Lausanne, Switzerland), The 35th edition of Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Open City Documentary Festival (London, UK), 18th Edition of Ecrans du Reel (Beirut, Lebanon) and was included in the 2nd Sharjah Architecture Triennale (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates).


Selected Install Views
Curatorial - Selected Projects 
Selected Collaborations
Publications
Sculpture Work
Photo Work
Residencies
Writings


Press


Current:

Group Show - Eli Kerr Gallery
How to Measure Distance - Film Program

Upcoming:


April 2024           60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia “Foreigners Everywhere”
                               North American Premiere of To Remain in the No Longer - Images Festival
May 2024            Solo Show Plein Sud Centre D’exposition
                               Young and Dundas Public Square Commission - CONTACT Festival
June 2024           Solo Show Eli Kerr Gallery



For CV, Studio Visits, Portfolio or Commissions
Email me or contact Eli Kerr
Instagram
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.