Ice is a globally charged word. For many Americans, it is the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that harbinger of xenophobia, along with a chilling indicator of weather changes, particularly as an agent of climate change. The Arctic region loses ice and other countries find themselves having more than they have had in decades. In Québec City, in the transition from winter to spring, there is an abundant almost neutral attraction factor – slippery ice covering the streets, ice creams are a complete smile of New France and Châteauesque style buildings and huge frozen masses are pushed downstream from the St. Lawrence. “Briser la glace/Splitting Ice”, the theme of the Manif d’Art Biennale in Québec (the only winter biennale in North America, held in Québec City, Lévis, Baie-Saint-Paul and Joliette), has many associations: from the performance Dancing in the snow (1948) by Françoise Sullivan (who is currently 102 years old and a matriarch in Québec art) in the 40s to moments of tension, breaking from the old into the new and multiplying.
Curator of the biennial Didier MorelliThe vision of ‘se positions the cold season as an active collaborator in the reshaping of space and perception, posing the question: what happens when art uses ice and water to dissolve boundaries that feel permanent? It highlights his perspective as an art historian and performance historian. When asked what his starting point for the biennale was, he tells the Observer: “It’s branded and presented as this North American Winter Biennale. One of the things I’ve really been thinking about was, what do we do in the northern regions of North America at the end of February? We go out with our bodies and encounter winter landscapes. We transform those actions that have been done most on them. For centuries in these lands and so, there was this idea. to really embrace the biennale’s identity and embrace the season, and the kind of climate the city itself is in. In a world as solid as ice on the outside, but as fluid as water, he adds, “I wanted things to be poetic and political. The whole work, or at least most of it, in my mind, has some sort of politics inscribed in it, though it may not be capital ‘P’ politics. It can be small ‘p’ politics. This is because I believe that all art in the world is political, because we all art lives in the social one, because the whole world is in art, it is important to accept this.”
Splitting Ice connects the geopolitics of Québec with the world explored in the work of 60 international artists in 41 locations. At the high-rise Espace Quatre Cents, one of the biennial venues, the first piece of art I encountered in the lobby was the giant An iceberg that breathes (2024) by Jessie Kleeman (a Greenlandic Inuit artist based in Denmark) – a literal expression of the theme. Morelli reported the “drastic shift” in the meaning of Kleeman’s work, despite the fact that she was involved in the show from the beginning of its conception. He invited Kleeman two years ago, before Greenland became so much a part of the heated international conversation about American and Danish imperialism. The work tells of Kleeman’s home, which is the site of a climate catastrophe. “What’s happened in the last couple of months with the US, that part takes on a whole new tenor. Exposing it or thinking about exposing it and realizing that Greenland has a historical colonial past with indigenous communities with Denmark, but now there’s a whole new empire, a whole new imperial power that’s trying to impose its communities.”
Along with the politically charged works are moments of rest, such as the one based in Mexico City Tania CandianiS ‘ Hearing ice and water moving. This work, appropriating military technology from the Second World War, is just outside the Espace Quatre Cents as a tube descends to the entrance of the St. Lawrence. Delighted, the participants were on their toes and close their ears to the amplified and meditative sound of moving ice and river. This was a seminal exercise and example of location-specific genius. Putting my ear to the machine gave me chills; it reminded me of the vital life force of the river I grew up swimming, fishing and boating in as a child, just south of Hill Island, Thousand Islands.
The biennale also addresses the ways in which ice and snow can be produced or constructed. My parka Korean artist living between Seoul and Los Angeles, created A story of the elusive snow (2013). The artist wanders Hollywood to find and document found objects from film sets with fake or man-made snow. She guides us in Korean as she encounters these objects as an outsider in a dynamic and fascinating contrast to the region’s naturally created snow and ice.
A work that divides the difference (word work with intention) is Not Lost Inside BY Maria Ezcurra (Argentine-Mexico-Canadian based in Montréal) at Le Lieu, in the art center. In a playful labyrinth, metal sheets move with the movement of the viewer, who becomes a participant in a choreography chosen by them. When the artist spoke, she explained that she used the “emergency blanket” often found in safety boxes. Her connection to this material signaled closure as she saw people in detention centers letting her sleep at night. Outside she built a small house out of this material to show her fragility and talk about forced migration due to climate change.
Another example of a piece that has a playful feel around a strong political theme is Close Far by Lebanese Canadian artist Joyce Joumaawhich brings humor, satire and visitor reactions to her video about the 1995 Quebec Referendum. The immortal words and melodic ecstasy of “My Heart Will Go On,” by Québécoise sweetheart Céline Dion, brings to mind the heartbreak of Rose and Jack in Titanic when the pair are trapped before Jack plunges into the freezing depths. The song comes from a gallery space with a black curtain around it (like a voting booth), but there is a microphone on a stand inside for karaoke, and there is a projection of images from the referendum on possible annexation and the complex cultural-linguistic politics of the province with b-roll of winter scenes. This transcribes the English words of a French-speaking singer on the ground to show this cultural fracture and hybridity.
Similar in complexity of language is a text-based neon work Arcand Thursday (Cree artist born in Saskatchewan but living in Ottawa) applied to the frieze of Espace Quatre Cents. Its location in the building emphasizes its importance. As provincial politics focus on the tension between French and English, conversation about signage and Indigenous language recognition comes to the fore. While not in Cree territory, the artist presents this memory along with HistoRymeaning “the way it flows”.
There were many gestures to Quebec’s and broader Canada’s connection to the Global South through allusions to the “snowbird” holiday lifestyle and to ice melting and becoming part of our shared waters. Two works that best explained this are Your island here (banners and banner performance video by Puerto Rican artist Niba Pastrana Santiago) and Series of containers BY Joiri Minaya (a Dominican artist based in New York City). The performance shows the artist swimming underwater as the banner rotates around her, clinging to the pool with ribbons. The video and banners as they appear on the first and third floors read as a declarative statement that brings out the geopolitics of Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States. This work relates to the show because the ice travels in these regions that connect us. In another work, Minaya depicts women in lush Caribbean beach scenes with tropical kitsch patterns that they are wearing as a projection of the desire of snowbirds who go on vacation to the Caribbean.
Separated from the current biennial, Wendat Storyteller Dominic Ste-Marie (who is also a marketing and sales advisor at Tourism Wendake) discussed that the Wends have created ladders for the many eels that call the area home. Those that grow and mature in Wendake are mostly females and go to the Sargasso Sea off the coast of Bermuda to mate. Disrupting the ease of travel for these mostly female eels could cause the entire eel population to collapse. This indicates global ecological cooperation and interdependence.
Another work that emphasized fluency but more in a cultural-religious way is Ahchiouta’ah BY Ludovic Boney (Wendat artist based in Lévis, QC) at the Grand Théâtre de Québec. Set against 80s Brutalist concrete walls that have an archaeological feel, with wooden banners and rugs, is a holographic new media work that projects a woman sometimes in indigenous regalia and sometimes in a nun’s habit. The projection onto fast moving propellers with LED lights on them had a complex effect of flashing or fading in and out. The sound experience was that of chants and drums, creating a truly transcendent experience that honors holding your own cultural traditions alongside those of the settlers.
Instead of propellers, Elias Nafaa (Lebanese Canadian living in Montreal and Beirut) connects meaning and form through glass. During the vernissage, immersed in my privileged art bubble, I learned that the US had declared war on Iran. I even encountered a protest against American intervention and the genocide committed by the Israeli government. Nafaa’s work felt particularly timely. The conical rockets stand on a plinth approximately 2 meters high in La Chambre Blanche; he creates them to look like ice and the monochromatic work in the white cube gallery has a somber effect. His goal with this work is to demonstrate how “colonization and imperialism continued to operate in full force,” according to Morelli. “The Nafaa piece, which is about bombs and rockets being used in the Lebanese and Palestinian territories over a period of about two years, and hearing about the first wave of attacks on Iran, but also after that the waves of attacks on Lebanon from the United States and Israel. It just felt surreal and devastating, but it also pointed out the importance of these things to have a job. almost like every day.”
Quebec City Biennale of Manif d’Art runs until April 19, 2026.
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