Joyce Joumaa

Interview by Tiana Reid

The sound of a buzzing insect sustains Joyce Joumaa’s Electoral Photogeny (2019), which explores the May 2018 Lebanese parliamentary elections. With a shaky eye, the work surveys electoral billboard campaigns, overlaid with a computerized voice reading Roland Barthes’s essay “Photography and Electoral Appeal” published in Mythologies (1957). Photography “constitutes an anti-intellectual weapon and tends to spirit away politics,” the voice reads. Smiling portraits attempt to sell a candidate’s motivations, familial circumstance, and psychic life, leaving policy to speak for itself. An earlier work in her short but impactful career, Electoral Photogeny’s themes of place, architecture, politics, and aesthetics extend to some of her more recent creations, which we discuss in this conversation, on the occasion of the artist’s inclusion in the Foundwork Artist Prize’s 2024 Short List. Joumaa, who lives between Beirut, Montreal, and Amsterdam, is an artist with a deep ethical vocabulary that narrates the coloniality of history. [This interview has been edited for clarity and length.]

Tiana Reid (TR): You deploy the language of social psychology to describe your work in relation to politics and space, making reference to that concept on your website and in your portfolio entry to Betise Humaine (2024), a work that juxtaposes footage from a first friendly soccer match between Algeria and France with the 1966 film The Battle of Algiers. Can you tell me about social psychology in relationship to your past, present, or future work? What is this concept doing for you?

Joyce Joumaa (JJ): To put things into context, I was born and raised until the age of 18 in Lebanon. I do not come from the generation who endured the Civil War, but my parents and people who were around me were the post-Civil war generation. I specifically mention this because, in regards to whether a civil war is happening or not, Lebanon is a very loaded space/place politically because of its location, its positioning with its multinational and international views on local and international politics. What I'm trying to say is that this environment has very much shaped the way I approach art, how I think about my ideas, how I want to present them and, maybe before presentation, just how I make things.

It's really the kind of environment that shapes your perspective on things. When I say perspective, it also means that I do not make something out of a pure artistic intuition. It's just the result of having been in this environment. You think about things intersecting constantly, even when you think they don't, and it is always part of something bigger and larger than your work at the studio—without sounding too purist. This idea of social psychology became something where I'm interested in looking at how we, as individuals and/or citizens, navigate these spaces and the architectures that shape the environments around us.

When I say architecture, I am not just rendering architecture as a pure design artifact or something that is just built materially, but something that is also philosophically or ideologically architectured. I think of space as both something that is tangible and intangible. From here, I'm interested in this idea of how we navigate them, how we react to them. When I say “to them,” I mean all this loadedness that is driven by the political charge that is inscribed in these spaces.

There is definitely a major interest in regards to my experience in Lebanon. But again, I'm starting to feel that this is something that interests me just as a broader concept. I found myself inclined to explore it in the Venice Biennial work and/or in this Bêtise Humaine (Human Stupidity) work that is looking at the public performance of citizenship in football stadiums, and also in regards to the history that is brought up in The Battle of Algiers (but I specifically also made a montage of scenes from The Battle of Algiers where people are in the streets, so there's conscious decision of looking at these two spaces).

Still from Bêtise Humaine (Human Stupidity), 2024

“When I say architecture, I am not just rendering architecture as a pure design artifact or something that is just built materially, but something that is also philosophically or ideologically architectured. I think of space as both something that is tangible and intangible.”

TR: Let’s talk about To Remain in the No Longer (2023)—construction, abandonment, and architecture. Can you tell me a little bit about how you started making work about Lebanon? It sounds like it was not necessarily a conscious choice, it was just sort of the environment.

JJ: The seed idea behind making To Remain in the No Longer started when I was beginning to think about and to be interested in the economic crisis in Lebanon. When we say economic crisis, we're thinking a lot about the collapse of the currency, the poor banking infrastructure, and all these almost intertwined words and terms that can be found in the lexicon of architecture as well. I asked myself, how is it possible for me to make work, not only about this notion of collapse or financial crisis, but also about the concept of failure in general? Because over the past years, at least when I was a teenager leading up to my time in university, things have become very disappointing in Lebanon in how they failed. The youth have undergone a cycle of disappointments. I became very interested in how failure is shaped, or finds itself in society at large, how nations fail to fulfill a particular set of national visions or projects, and how even revolutions failed.

In 2019, we started something in Beirut that expanded across all of Lebanon and everyone thought this was going to be the moment where we overthrew the corrupt elite. It went on for months and then it eventually didn't lead to anything. This idea of failure is something that grew on me throughout the years. I thought, okay, I'm going to take this failed project—this modernist architectural project that failed to fulfill its vision and function, for many reasons that I don't specifically talk about in the film—and make it a point of departure, or an emblematic site for larger failures. I thought that, visually, by exploring the precarity and dysfunctionality of these concrete structures and their soon-to-collapse state, I could make a point on a visual level, I would say, to talk about collapse and failure.

It was a very new reading, by the way, to point out the failures, because though I'm not the first to study it academically nor artistically, but I think To Remain is one of the first projects that is interested in the modernist project’s failed state as opposed to offering a romantic reading of how amazing it is, or how [Oscar] Niemeyer’s vision was so unique. That was not a narrative or a discourse, let's say, that I wanted to foreground because of my interest in looking at it from a social perspective instead of relying on the voices of architects, and mostly architects who look at it from a design standpoint.

I was interested in talking to the people who lived around it or had different relationships to it or to the city. It was almost an attempt, I would say, to demystify this site and how it lives. In the past, people would just parachute themselves into the site, look at it, but not be interested in looking at Tripoli or how it sits into this larger city, what the city is, and what it means.

"This idea of failure is something that grew on me throughout the years. I thought, okay, I'm going to take this failed project—this modernist architectural project that failed to fulfill its vision and function, for many reasons that I don't specifically talk about in the film—and make it a point of departure, or an emblematic site for larger failures.”

Stills from To Remain in the No Longer, 2023

TR: You are putting your finger on the era of political disappointment that we live in.

I also wanted to talk about how research shapes your work and the kind of research you engage in. I read a CBC Arts interview published 2024 where you talked about engaging in politics as a “series of webs” and layers in order to capture some of the complexities. Could you tell me about your research practice?

JJ: I depart, most of the time, from research, as in a work starts with me through research and then it develops into an artwork. I am starting to think of research as an equivalent to translation or something that resembles translation. While researching what is happening is, sure, that I am collecting information about a subject matter, I am also developing ways for me to translate it. The more I know, the more I'm able to translate as an artist. Again, even though I don't necessarily think that people should be given the full picture, I'm also similarly very much into the idea of withholding things from the public and playing with that tension of knowing and not knowing. But, in similar ways, a lot of my practice was dictated by forensic interest. I am at a critical point in my practice right now as an early career artist; I am trying to find ways that it can remain forensic, but can also be more abstract.

I do come from and have a deep interest in documentary, but I'm also now starting to be like, okay, maybe it's not about that directness, or things being so didactic, or showing everything. It's hard coming from documentary to think that way, but, again, this is all stemming from my interest in that tension that emerges when you withhold. It's something, as I grow, that has emerged quite recently. Now I'm like, maybe we don't give everything, and something happens in there. When I say this, it's both, discursively, so research-wise and aesthetically. That was something that also shaped the way To Remain in the No Longer came about as a form, because I had so much research. I had done so much research and had so many archives related to the site. I made the decision not to include everything, but it was hard.

“I am starting to think of research as an equivalent to translation or something that resembles translation.”

TR: I am very struck by sound in your work. I was thinking about the sonic in Mutable Cycles II (2024), the ambient drone, variations of noisy and quiet cars, construction, motorcycles—very much a cacophony. Another example is Merging, dissecting, collecting (2021) with the sound of the history lessons from Lebanese school textbooks. How do you go about juxtaposing sound and image?

JJ: That's a very interesting question, also very much present in Memory Contours (2024) in the Venice Biennale. This work for me is equally a sound piece and a visual piece. I wouldn't say it's just a video work. While thinking about translating the research that I had done on Ellis Island, and this intelligence test, I was thinking with my sound designer collaborator, Louis Parent, about how we could translate the space of Ellis Island. We started looking at archival photos of how giant that immigration station was in terms of depth, like architectural depth, and the fact that it was an island, so it was surrounded by sea, seagulls, and water, but then the recurring sound of a boat arriving was also part of the landscape. We were also thinking: How do we imply that it is a waiting room? That it is the architecture of a waiting room?

In waiting rooms, one of the first elements that you hear is a number, which is your number. All of these elements found their way of being translated through sound in that Venice piece. Sound, in this way, was very important, but it also goes back to how I came up with the sound in Mutable Cycles II, where it was so much related to translating the social environment, but also the spatial environment through sound as opposed to the visuals. I almost see sound as another image or as an accompanying image to the images that I already create. In other ways, I'm interested in the visual potential of sound and how, when people listen to it, I would hope that they would form an image or see something. For me, thinking through sound is not as different as thinking through images as a lens-based or moving image-based artist.

Still from Mutable Cycles II, 2024

“I almost see sound as another image or as an accompanying image to the images that I already create. In other ways, I'm interested in the visual potential of sound and how, when people listen to it, I would hope that they would form an image or see something.”

TR: You're talking about the imaginative capacity or potential of sound. Even when I'm thinking about when I was watching or making notes for Mutable Cycles II, I was like, "I think that's a car. I think that's a motorcycle," but I wasn't sure. I couldn't be so sure. I was imagining what the sounds corresponded to. And, it creates its own atmosphere that is its own visual. You mentioned the sound artist, Louis Parent. Can you talk about your relationship to collaboration?

JJ: I've never been asked this question before. In the way that I am as an artist, I don’t see myself as able to just exclusively embark on this solo journey or way of making or thinking about a work by myself. I value collaborations a lot. I think that it's very inherent to the nature of the moving image as a medium, as it requires sound and someone who knows how to operate on a camera, etc. Sure, there are few works that I've shot myself, but working with a director of photography or cinematographer is always crucial because their understanding of image-making is an added value to what I'm trying to say on a conceptual level, so then they are complementary.

Sound design is the same. It's talking about how these images can exist sonically and what elements do you create to complement the image that you already have on a visual level. Even with curators, when I have solo shows that are, for some reason, not necessarily curated, I try to make a point to include a collaboration or a curator who can come into the picture, because I think so much emerges from conversation. The type of work that I do for myself as an artist is quite personal.

Installation view from Memory Contours, 2024, at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Photo credit: Valentina Mori.

TR: You talked a bit about the formal collaborations that moving image requires, but then also just your own need or desire for informal collaborations.

JJ: A lot of my friendships are almost unintentional collaborations into work, because for me, a sound designer is as important as this friend who I meet up with over an espresso or drink to share the seed ideas about a work I want to make. That first response is as important to me in continuing to shape the show as someone who's helping me make something on a creative level, but that goes back to the idea of the conversation. It's interesting that you distinguish between formal and informal, but I think I value both equally.

TR: I'm wondering if there's something you would like to discuss, that we haven't yet discussed, that you feel is really important. Do you want to talk about identity politics?

JJ: It's like the ghost that follows me all the time.

TR: I love the way you put that: It haunts us.

JJ: I think of identity politics as a result of the binary aspect of the world in which everything is thriving right now. This binarism is a lot about categorizations and, when this happens, there’s the pressure of expectations that comes when you are from a certain place and hold within you a certain history or knowledge of a place. You are expected to be a messenger and, in this way, it has been instrumentalized in the contemporary art world.

In response to the work I made at the Biennale, a lot of people were like, "Oh, this is the first time you made work that's not about Lebanon." And then it made me wonder, why can't I just be interested in these broader concepts without it being specific to my identity?

“...There’s the pressure of expectations that comes when you are from a certain place and hold within you a certain history or knowledge of a place. You are expected to be a messenger and, in this way, it has been instrumentalized in the contemporary art world.”

TR: It's the art world, it's literature, it's academia. It's in a lot of places. What I really liked, in the way you talked about it, is who has the right to theorize or who has the right to universality? That's a difficult term, but who has the right to go beyond the specific? It's really about intellectual practice and who is allowed to think beyond.

JJ: It's so interesting, what you just said, because in ways it created this hierarchy in terms of thinking; you should be thinking within the realm of where you come from and what your identity is, and then someone else is allowed to think beyond the specificity. I think my problem is with this hierarchical thinking, or way of developing ideas or works.

Tiana Reid

Tiana Reid is an assistant professor in the English Department at York University in Toronto. Her research and teaching interests include black literature, gender, and labor. Her writing has been published in Aperture, BOMB Magazine, Frieze, Momus, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and The Yale Review, as well as artist catalogues and books for Carrie Mae Weems, Tau Lewis, Darrel Ellis, and others. She received her PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.