This Week in Palestine Artist of the Month: Larissa Sansour

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Artist of the Month

Larissa Sansour Born in Jerusalem, Larissa Sansour studied fine art in Copenhagen, London, and New York, and earned an MA from New York University. Her work is interdisciplinary, immersed in the current political dialogue, and utilises video art, photography, experimental documentary, the book form, and the Internet. Sansour borrows heavily from the language of film and pop culture. By approximating the nature, reality, and complexity of life in Palestine and the Middle East in general to visual forms normally associated with entertainment and televised pastime, her grandiose and often humorous schemes clash with the gravity expected from works that comment on the region. References and details ranging from sci-fi and spaghetti westerns to horror films converge with Middle East politics and social issues to create intricate parallel universes in which a new value system can be decoded. Sansour’s work has been exhibited worldwide in international biennials, galleries, museums, film festivals, and on the Internet and is featured in many art publications. Her most notable shows include those at the Tate Modern in London and the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. In 2008, her work was featured in the Third Guangzhou Triennial in China, the Busan Biennale in South Korea, and PhotoCairo4 in Egypt. Her most recent film, A Space Exodus, was nominated for the short-film category at the Dubai International Film Festival. The list of shows for 2009 included the 11th International Istanbul Biennial, Art Dubai, and the IMA in Paris. She also launched her graphic book, The Novel of Nonel and Vovel, a joint project with artist Oreet Ashery. The book appeared first at the Venice Biennale bookshops in August and was launched at the Tate Modern in the United Kingdom. It will launch at the Brooklyn Museum, USA, and Nikolaj Kunsthal in Denmark in January 2010. Sansour will have her first solo shows in New York and Paris in early 2010. Sansour’s work is represented by Galerie La B.A.N.K. in Paris, France. She lives and works in London, UK. A Space Exodus Larissa Sansour’s work is immediately engaging yet always ambiguous. She often places herself at the centre of her work, yet the result is neither autobiographical nor is it political commentary. She creates scenarios where the Palestinian is no longer the victim but, instead, enjoys the same power as anyone else in our media-driven, entertainment-led world. Works like Bethlehem Bandolero, where Sansour enters town like the lone gunslinger of spaghetti westerns, or Happy Days, which shows the military occupation as a series of cosy vignettes, turn the world upside down. The people who are usually the subject of news reports and diplomatic initiatives instead become the commentators. No longer the underdogs, they stand at the same level as the rest of the world’s media and power-players. The double-irony, as Sansour is all too aware, is that something is lost in the translation to a more fluent, funny, and glossy medium. Her work succeeds because it foregrounds an unspoken absence. Smiling through its pain, one might say. A Space Exodus continues this line by re-imagining one of America’s finest moments - the moon landing - as a Palestinian triumph. Everything is the same, albeit a little more beautiful, from the touches of embroidery to the curl of her boots. Even the sadness that pervades the film is not necessarily Palestinian. Of course, the work reflects the fact that Palestinians are in limbo without a state, as their homeland shrinks like a spot on the horizon. Yet the sadness of A Space Exodus is also implicit in the contemporary reactions to the US space programme, from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to Tarkovsky’s Solaris and even David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” The moon landings reflected a widespread anxiety that, in leaving earth, we risked never being able to return home again. Yet because this anxiety is universal, the pain of the real, forced exodus of the Palestinians is doomed to remain a private grief, forgotten by the rest of the world. A Space Exodus has been shown in many museums and film festivals worldwide, including recently (January 2010) in Sansour’s first New York solo show. It was also shown in a group show in Jerusalem (The Other Shadow of the City), which led Sansour to create a new work specifically to accompany A Space Exodus. The Nakba photographs provide the missing piece, the moment of real pain that underpins the other work. Palestinians can follow their dreams to the edges of the universe, but the flags they plant and the territories they claim will feel like defeats if there is no response from Jerusalem. It is of special significance that these twin pieces resonate together, in the heart of Jerusalem where they belong.