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Visual artist Joan Jonas has always loved the ocean. A key figure in several modern art movements, the 90-year-old Jonas says she can\u2019t recall a time when the ocean didn\u2019t enchant her. And it was the waters off Cape Breton, where she has lived part-time for over 50 years, that inspired one of her best known works, Moving Off the Land II, the multi-piece work that comprises the sprawling installation Joan Jonas: We come from the sea, on now at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I came up here, I immediately fell in love with Cape Breton, the landscape, the air,\u201d Jonas says. I’ve done so much work up here, so it’s been an inspiration. And it’s wonderful to be able to show \u2026 show my latest work up here, which has to do with the sea.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her love of Cape Breton\u2019s cold Atlantic waters runs throughout We come from the sea.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The show is a combination of formats, including drawings, video, soundscapes, installation and projections. While many art shows about the ocean are presented through a folk art lens, Jonas\u2019s work lives very much in the modern art world. (Although, Jonas is quick to share that folk art is a key inspiration for her.). A joint production with the National Gallery, the show will travel across Canada after it wraps at the AGNS this October. Moving Off the Land II, the show\u2019s central work, made its North American debut at New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Part of Joan Jonas: We come from the sea, on now at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. (Courtesy of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia)<\/p>\n
Jonas has summered in Cape Breton since 1970, one of a loose cohort of artists who made a seasonal migration from New York City. (Lauded painter\/sculptor June Leaf and her husband, legendary photographer Robert Frank, were also part of that group.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just friendships, and we never wanted to have a scene,\u201d Jonas says, speaking from Cape Breton on a blazing July day. \u201cWe actually were very private about what we did up here, and I wanted to be in a place where I didn’t have to talk about art. I like talking about the everyday, and that was very important.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her Cape Breton neighbours might have never known that she was making world-class, genre-pushing art, that\u2019s exactly what Jonas did (and continues to do). David Diviney, chief curator at the AGNS,says Jonas\u2019s artworks \u201ccontinue to be crucial to the development of many genres: video performance, conceptual art, theatre.\u201d\u00a0 Jonas\u2019s resume backs him up: winner of the Icon Award at the inaugural Art Basel Awards in 2025, she was the subject of a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in 2024, and has shown work everywhere from London\u2019s Tate Modern to the Venice Biennial, where she presented solo works at the USA pavilion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the artist\u2019s glittering resume aside, the AGNS show is also a timely, prescient installation: It presents viewers with a meditation on the beauty of the world\u2019s oceans during a time when they, along with the rest of the natural world, are under threat. At the time of our interview., nearly 900 wildfires are burning across the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n While viewers doubtlessly will leave the exhibit struck by the ocean\u2019s beauty, Diviney says the show is also \u201ca bit of a call to action \u2026 where we’re urged to think about things beyond that: The threat that this ecosystem is under.\u201d<\/p>\n Jonas adds that: many of the whales who have inspired her art are facing habitat loss and worries about the threats posed by both climate change and the continued commercial exploitation of the ocean. \u201cIt’s an unexplored territory, and I hope it stays that way, because as we explore, we destroy. I’m very worried about companies taking over and getting minerals from the ocean,\u201d she says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jonas\u2019s eco-anxiety also extends to worrying about what the ocean will look like to future generations. Moving Off the Land II includes some performance recordings that feature children of Jonas\u2019s friends: \u201cIt’s a little bit about teaching about what’s happening to our environment and what’s going to happen. So, the children are witnesses to that, and they will inherit it,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n Jonas hopes viewers walk away from the show with a deeper understanding of\u00a0 \u201cthe beauty of the ocean, basically, and the complexity of life in the ocean.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She adds that water shapes our lives. It\u2019s the building block of life, and if you go far enough back, every living creature on this planet is descended from aquatic life. \u201cWe come from the sea,\u201d she says, circling back to the show\u2019s name. \u201cWe’re made up of all the same elements [as] the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of us may have even come from the sea more recently than we realize.\u201dMy theory is that mermaids have the memory. We have the memory of being mermaids, of swimming.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Multiple](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784990771_287_default.jpg\")
Joan Jonas: We come from the sea, on now at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. (Courtesy of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia)<\/p>\n