Description of the exhibition
In Québec, along with the defence of the French language, the feeling of belonging has long been enmeshed with bucolic scenes of outdoor activities such as skating on frozen ponds and snowshoeing through a sugar bush. Connecting language, culture, and cold oceanic waters, Joyce Joumaa pinpoints a particular moment in the province’s history, when Céline Dion’s hit “My Heart Will Go On”—Titanic’s theme song—contrasted with the local political debate around the referendum on Québec sovereignty.
In one of the scenes from the film, Rose floats on a piece of wreckage while her lover Jack is half submerged in freezing water. Capitalizing on the impact of this image and its association with Dion’s song, Joumaa juxtaposes it with an archive of National Film Board documentaries describing the 1995 referendum in Québec. Creating a stage for the audience to sing, Joumaa creates a dialogue between the body, the song’s English lyrics, and the closely contested referendum in a choreography that combines language, identity, action, and mediatized histories. This time-crunching choreography also references the current rise in Québec nationalism and the renewed debates on identity. Here, Joumaa prompts us to express our opinions and our solidarity in the present moment—to sound the alarm against the iceberg we might be about to hit.
