La Biennale de Québec: What Changes When the Ice Breaks

Ice is a charged word around the world. For many Americans, it’s an acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that phrase is anti-immigrant, and a chilling reference to climate change, especially as an agent of climate change. The Arctic region is losing ice, and some countries are finding themselves with more of it than they have had in decades. In the city of Quebec, in the transition from winter to spring, it is a lovely feature near-side-slippery snow covering the streets, toothy snow full of buildings in the style of New France and Châteauesque and large frozen crowds are pushed down the river St. Lawrence. “Briser la glace/Splitting Ice,” the theme of Manif d’Art’s Biennale de Québec (the only biennial winter season in North America, held in Québec City, Lévis, Baie-Saint-Paul and Joliette), has many associations: from the game. Danse dans la neige (1948) by Françoise Sullivan (now 102 years old and Quebec art professor) in the ’40s to times of tension, creative bursts into innovation and multiplicity.

Didier Morelli’s two-year vision curator places the cold season as an active participant in reshaping space and perspective, asking the question: what happens when art uses ice and water to dissolve boundaries that feel eternal? He expresses his opinion as an art historian and a historian of avant-garde performance. When asked what was his starting point for the biennial, he tells the Observer, “It’s marked and put forward as this biennial winter in North America. One of the things I really thought about was, what do we do in the northern regions of North America at the end of February? We come out with our bodies and meet the places that have winter. We transform ourselves by doing these different actions in the events of the century. So, there was this idea of really accepting the identity of the biennial and accepting the season, and the kind of the weather in the city itself.” In a world as hard as ice outside but as wet as water, he adds, “I wanted things to be poetic and political. Every work, or at least most of it, in my mind, has some kind of politics written in it, although it might not be a big ‘P’ for politics. It might be a little ‘politics.’

Splitting Ice connects the geopolitics of Quebec with the world as explored in the work of 60 international artists in 41 locations. In the multi-story building Espace Quatre Cents, one of the biennial residences, the first artwork I encountered in the lobby was huge. The Breathing Iceberg (2024) by Jessie Kleeman (Inuit Greenlandic artist based in Denmark)—a literal expression of the theme. Morelli reported a “significant change” in the meaning of Kleeman’s work, despite the fact that it was included in the exhibition from the beginning of its conception. He invited Kleeman two years ago, before Greenland became a major part of international discussions about American and Danish imperialism. The work depicts Kleeman’s home, which is the site of a climate disaster. “What has happened in the last few months with the USA, that piece takes a completely new tenor. Showing it or thinking about showing it and realizing that Greenland has a past history of colonialism and traditional communities with Denmark, but now there is a new regime, a completely new imperial power that is trying to impose its power and its power on the communities there.”

Paired with politically charged works are liberal moments, such as that of Mexico City-based Tania Candiani. Listening to Ice and Moving Water. This project, which uses military technology from World War II, is just outside the Espace Quatre Cents as a tube that descends to the entrance of the River St. Lawrence. Excitedly, the participants tiptoed and held their ears to listen to the amplified sound and reflections of the snow and the moving river. This was a groundwork and an example of site-specific intelligence. Putting my ear to the phone gave me chills; it reminded me of the life force of the river I grew up swimming, fishing and boating in, just south of Hill Island, in the Thousand Islands.

The biennial addresses the ways in which ice and snow can be made or created. Minha Park, a Korean artist living between Seoul and Los Angeles, was created The Story of the Missing Snow (2013). An artist travels around Hollywood to find and document objects found on film sets of artificial or man-made snow. He guides us in Korean as he experiences these things as an outsider in stark and fascinating contrast to the natural snow and ice in the region.

A job that splits the difference (pun intended). Pas Perdus-Dedans by Maria Ezcurra (Argentine-Mexican-Canadian based in Montréal) at Le Lieu, center en art actuel. In the playful labyrinth, the metal sheets move with the viewer’s movements and become part of the program of his choice. When the artist spoke, he explained that he was using an “emergency blanket” commonly found in safety gear. His association with this information showed a fenced area as he saw people in detention centers to spend the night. Outside he built a small house out of this material to show instability and talk about forced migration due to climate change.

Another example of a work with the idea of ​​playing around with a strong political subject Near and Far by Lebanese-Canadian artist Joyce Joumaa, who brings humor, sarcasm and guest feedback to her video about the 1995 Quebec Referendum. The immortal words and sweet sound of “My Heart Will Go On,” by Québécoise lover Céline Dion, reminds us of the plight of Rose and Jack e. The Titanic where the couple are tied up before Jack sinks to the deep end. The song originates from a gallery space with a black curtain around it (like a voting booth), but it has a microphone in the karaoke stand inside, and there is a projection of images from a survey about the possible disintegration and the complex politics of the provincial cultural language with b-roll of winter scenes. This transcription of English words by a French-speaking artist in the world shows this fracture and the mixture of culture.

Similarly focused on the problem of language, a neon work based on a text by Joi Arcand (a Cree artist born in Saskatchewan but living in Ottawa) was used in the frieze of Espace Quatre Cents. Its location in the building emphasizes its importance. Although provincial politics is focused on the tension between French and English, the discussion about the identity and recognition of indigenous languages ​​is prioritized. While not in the Cree area, the artist provides this reminder along with it it sayswhich means “the way it flows.”

There have been many touches in Quebec and Canada’s wider connection to the Global South through talk of a vacation home for “snowbirds” and melting snow becoming part of our shared waters. Two works that illustrate this very well are these Your Island Is Here (banners and video performance of banners by Puerto Rican artist Niba Pastrana Santiago) and Bowl Series by Joiri Minaya (Dominican artist based in New York City). The game shows the singer swimming underwater as a banner surrounds him, bobbing in the pool. The video and the banners as they are shown on the ground and the third floor are read as a declarative statement that brings the geopolitics of Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States. This work is related to the exhibition because the snow goes to these regions that connect us. In another work, Minaya shows women in Caribbean blue sea scenes with hot kitsch patterns that they wear as a reflection of the desire of the snowbirds who go on vacation to the Caribbean.

Separated from the original two years ago, Wendat storyteller Dominic Ste-Marie (who is also a marketing and sales consultant at Tourism Wendake) shared that the Wendat have been creating ladders for the many eels that call this area home. Those that grow and mature in Wendake are mostly females, and they go to the Sargasso Sea off the coast of Bermuda to mate. Disrupting the easy movement of these eels, especially the females, can cause the collapse of all eels. This reflects global environmental interactions and interdependence.

Another work that emphasized fluidity but culturally-religiously Ahchiouta’ah by Ludovic Boney (Wendat artist based in Lévis, QC) at the Grand Théâtre de Québec. Set against rough ’80s cut concrete walls with an archaeological feel, with wooden railings and carpets, it’s a holographic new media work that projects a woman sometimes in traditional regalia and sometimes in a nun’s habit. The appearance of fast-moving propellers with LED lights on them has a serious effect of flickering or fading in and out. The sonic experience was of chanting and drumming, creating a truly transcendent experience that honors holding onto your own and immigrant cultures.

Instead of a propeller, Elias Nafaa (a Lebanese Canadian living in Montréal and Beirut) marries meaning and design through the use of glass. During the vernissage, immersed in my artistic bubble, I learned that the US had declared war on Iran. I even encountered a protest against the US intervention and the genocide committed by the Israeli government. Nafaa’s work felt timely. Conical arrows stand at a height of about 2 meters in La Chambre Blanche; he creates them to look like snow, and the monochromatic work in the white cube gallery has a sad effect. His purpose with this work is to show how “colonialism, and imperialism continued, penetrated, fully,” according to Morelli. “Nafaa’s episode, which is about the bombs and missiles used in the areas of Lebanon and Palestine over a period of two years, and hearing about this first wave of attacks by Iran, but also after the waves of attacks on Lebanon by the United States and Israel.

Manif d’Art’s Quebec City Biennial valid until April 19, 2026.

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