Curator and theme of Quebec City Biennial 2026

A staple of the Canadian art scene, Manif d’art—The Quebec City Biennial is the only winter biennial in North America. The event presents the work of over 100 local, national and international artists. Besides its many exhibitions, the event offers a plethora of activities based on its global theme renewed for every iteration.

The curator of Manif d’art 12—The Quebec City Biennial is Didier Morelli, who has chosen the theme “Briser la glace / Splitting ice” for this 12th edition.

DIDIER MORELLI

Didier Morelli is a curator, performance and art historian, cultural critic and visual artist. His Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture (FRQSC) Postdoctoral Fellowship, which he holds at Concordia University and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) examines how second-wave feminist performances subverted urban functionalism by imagining alternate modes of embodiment in Montreal and Toronto during the 1970s.

In addition to being the curatorial research assistant for the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) career retrospective of the photographer Evergon (2022), Morelli also curated Traversée/Crossing at Stewart Hall Art Gallery (2022); Jardins sans murs at the Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment (2023); and Sportification at Artexte (2024). Previously the associate editor at Espace art actuel, his writing has also been published in Art Journal, CTR: Canadian Theatre Review, C Magazine, CBC Arts, Esse Arts + Opinions, RACAR, Spirale, and TDR: The Drama Review.

"BRISER LA GLACE/SPLITTING ICE"

How can our bodies wade and break through, or even simply survive the melting of snows, the warming of seas, the pollution of aquifers, the receding of coastlines, and the waning of freshwaters? Since Françoise Sullivan’s now-iconic Danse dans la neige (1948), Québec’s wintery landscape has been the site for feminist, movement-driven actions in which bodies and their natural environments are intertwined in choreographies of warm, living flesh meeting cold, white snow.

Navigating frozen waters and its many mutable forms—ice, slush, powder, blizzard, and more—artists have inhabited their ecosystems, combining different mediums as a means of communing with nature, politically affirming their identities, and denouncing the underlying relations between patriarchy, colonization, resource extraction and the precipitating climate disaster we face today.

Embracing its identity as the only winter Biennale in North America, Manif d’art 12 seeks to commemorate, celebrate, and continue intergenerational legacies of performance and its manifestations across embodied practices that are rooted in the land, specifically water and its many forms throughout the globe, seasons, and climates.