Inside the Making of Joan Jonas: We come from the sea
“When you’re showing your work in a place like this, it means a lot. Because in New York, you look across the street and it stops. Here you look on the horizon, it just goes.”
— Joan Jonas
For Joan Jonas, making art begins with curiosity: a landscape, a story, a movement, an image, or a question can become the starting point for something new. In this documentary, Jonas reflects on the ideas and ways of working that have shaped her practice, from drawing and performance to video, mythology, and storytelling.
Through conversations with Jonas, curators, and collaborators, the film offers a look at the making of her work and what it means for her to share it with audiences in Nova Scotia. She speaks about her years spent along the coast of Cape Breton, where the ocean, landscape, music, and culture have continually inspired her, and about her belief in bringing together different forms and perspectives to see the world in new ways.
Joan Jonas: We come from the sea is a powerful and immersive multisensory exhibition featuring Moving Off the Land II, a major installation exploring the beauty, biodiversity and vulnerability of our oceans. Drawing on years of research, performance and filmmaking in Jamaica, Nova Scotia and aquariums around the world, Jonas brings together layered projections, soundscapes, movement, drawing and storytelling to reflect on our relationship with the sea.
Organized in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada, the exhibition was previously presented at Eltuek Arts Centre in Sydney and the Inverness County Centre for the Arts in Inverness, Nova Scotia, before travelling to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, where it is on view until October 4, 2026.
The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia acknowledges exhibition support from the Province of Nova Scotia, the Canada Council for the Arts, the D.R. Sobey Foundation and The Sobey Foundation. The National Gallery of Canada’s National Engagement initiative is generously supported by Michael Nesbitt, with additional funding from the National Gallery of Canada Foundation.