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Larissa Sansour Trilogy

A Space Exodus

010_07 / 22 December 2016

 

Larissa Sansour

A Space Exodus

5 mins 53 secs

 

A Space Exodus (بعثة فضاء) sets up an adapted stretch of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in a Middle Eastern political context. The recognizable music scores of the 1968 science fiction film are changed to arabesque chords matching the surreal visuals of Sansour's film.

The film follows the artist herself onto a phantasmagoric journey through the universe echoing Kubrick's thematic concerns for human evolution, progress and technology. However, in her film, Sansour posits the idea of a first Palestinian into space, and, referencing Armstrong's moon landing, she interprets this theoretical gesture as 'a small step for a Palestinian, a giant leap for mankind'.


The film offers a naively hopeful and optimistic vision for a Palestinian future contrasting sharply with all the elements that are currently eating away at the very idea of a viable Palestinian state.

About the author

Larissa Sansour

Larissa Sansour was born in East Jerusalem and studied fine arts in London, New York and Copenhagen. Her work is interdisciplinary, immersed in the current political dialogue and utilises video, photography, installation, the book form and the Internet. The dichotomy of belonging to and being removed from the very same piece of land is central to Sansour's work. She often resorts to fictionalised space to address current political realities. By approximating the nature, reality and complexity of life in Palestine and the Middle East to visual forms normally associated with entertainment, her grandiose and often humorous schemes clash with the gravity expected from works commenting on the region. References and details ranging from sci-fi and superheroes to spaghetti westerns and horror films converge with Middle Eastern politics and social issues to create intricate parallel universes in which a new value system can be decoded. Recent solo exhibitions include Galerie Anne de Villepoix in Paris, Photographic Center in Copenhagen, Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Depo in Istanbul and Jack the Pelican in New York. Her work has featured in the biennials of Istanbul, Busan and Liverpool. She has exhibited at venues such as Tate Modern, London; Brooklyn Museum, NYC; Centre Pompidou, Paris; LOOP, Seoul; Al Hoash, Jerusalem; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark; House of World Cultures, Berlin, and MOCA, Hiroshima.