Jet d’encre blanche sur carton noir à deux plis, 2024
Presaging the present-day electricity crisis in Lebanon, this diptych departs from a diagram in a 1965 edition of Revue de Géographie de Lyon outlining Lebanon’s topography and waterways, noting its abundant potential for hydroelectric power. In the work, the diagram is inverted, with contour lines in white ink printed on a black substrate; the territory is dimmed and rendered near-illegible.
Joyce Joumaa is a video artist and writer based in Beirut, Montréal, and Amsterdam. After growing up in Lebanon, she earned a BFA in film studies at Concordia University (Montréal). She focuses on microhistories within Lebanon as a way to understand how past structures inform the present moment.
Central to her practice is an interest in the political charge inscribed in space and the social psychology that unfolds from this tension. She has exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, e-flux Screening Room (New York), Stewart Hall Art Gallery (Montréal), the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, the 60th Venice Biennale, and the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include the Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montréal), Plein Sud, centre d’exposition en art actuel (Longueuil), and Eli Kerr (Montréal). She is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists and the 2023 Plein Sud award.