Larissa Sansour

Born in 1973 in East Jerusalem, Larissa Sansour now lives and works in London. Using video, photography, installation and sculpture as her main mediums, her work readily borrows elements of language from popular culture, which she hybridizes with her socio-political preoccupations, often concerning the Palestinian situation and, on a larger scale, the various conflicts in the Middle East. The artist then composes her testimonies as fictions, revealing the absurdity of the geopolitical realities she mentions. In 2011, A Space Exodus caused a scandal when the 2011 Elysée Lacoste Prize decided to exclude the prize-winning video as being too politically oriented. Nevertheless, her work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, for example at Nikolaj Kunst in Copenhagen, the Turku Art Museum in Finland and DEPO in Istanbul, and the artist has been invited to present her work at numerous biennales, including those in Venice and Istanbul.