Joyce Joumaa

Merging, Dissecting, Collecting
2021
Mini DV transfer to HD video, color, sound
7:12 min

September 19 – November 16, 2025
(Schaufenster am Hofgarten & online)

Joyce Joumaa’s video work Merging, Dissecting, Collecting (2021) interrogates the concept of the reversed gaze. Employing the binocular viewfinder as visual anchor—historically a colonial instrument—the work juxtaposes footage that was shot in Istanbul, Turkey and Tripoli, Lebanon. The former being situated as a locus of imperial power and the latter being a place subjected to colonization. Overlaid with audio drawn from history lessons from Lebanese school textbooks, the video aims at revisiting the history of colonization by the Ottoman Empire in present time, and how this imperial legacy is constructed, interpreted, and mediated in contemporary pedagogical frameworks.