In the province of Quebec, winter and nordicity are sacred markers of identity deeply grounded in the cultural landscape. Next to the defense of the French language, sentiments of belonging have long been enmeshed with bucolic scenes of outdoor physical activities like skating rinks on frozen ponds, snowshoeing in the maple tree lined backcountry, and more recently, cold plunges in freshly cut ice holes on lakes and rivers. Connecting language, culture, and cold oceanic waters, Joyce Joumaa’s moving image work, pinpoints a particular moment in Quebecois history in the mid 1990s where the darling global megastar Céline Dion’s English hit “My Heart Will Go On” came in contrast with the local politics of a referendum in the province seeking sovereignty from Canada.

“My Heart Will Go On” was the theme song for the movie Titanic (1997), a fictionalized romantic historical drama based on the sinking of the RMS Titanic directed by James Cameron. In one of the most iconic scenes from the film, Rose, played by Kate Winslet, floats on a piece of shipwreck while her lover Jack, played by Leonardo Di Caprio, clings on for dear life, his body half submerged in freezing water surrounded by floating pieces of ice. Joumaa, capitalizing on the lasting global impact of this cinematographic image and its association to Dion’s song, juxtaposes it with an archive of National Film Board documentaries describing the 1997 referendum in Quebec. Through this parallel, the artist highlights how Dion embodied tensions between her identity as a Québécoise, heralded in newspapers as a “local” Francophone girl, while also being celebrated in the rest of Canada as a national, English-speaking success. Creating a stage for the audience to partake in the act of singing, the artist places the body, the English lyrics of song, and the obstructed images of the closely contested referendum in a choreography that enmeshes language, identity, action, and mediatized histories. 

Joumaa’s work asks us to reflect on taking the microphone and voicing our opinions and solidarity in the present moment, alarming others to the iceberg we might be careening towards, or like the orchestra in Titanic playing a tune on a sinking vessel bound for the bottom of a dark and freezing cold ocean floor.

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