6 DECEMBER 2024 • By Larissa Sansour
A Space Exodus | Nation Estate
Our Featured Artist for TMR 47 • GENRE FICTION is Larissa Sansour, a Palestinian-born artist whose work is bound up with visions of the future. She makes use of science fiction as a vehicle for providing an alternative perspective on current social issues. Her practice includes photography, film, sculpture, and installation art. Her sci-fi trilogy, under the common themes of loss, belonging, heritage and national identity, are A Space Exodus (2008), Nation Estate (2012) and In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2015) each exploring different aspects of the political turmoil in the center of the world aka the Middle East.
While A Space Exodus envisions the final uprootedness of the Palestinian experience and takes the current political predicament to its extra-terrestrial extreme by landing the first Palestinian on the moon, Nation Estate reveals a sinister account of an entire population restricted to a single skyscraper, with each Palestinian city confined to a single floor. In the trilogy’s final installment, In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain, a narrative resistance leader engages in archaeological warfare in a desperate attempt to secure the future of her people. Using the language of sci-fi and glossy production, Sansour’s trilogy presents a dystopian vision of a Middle East on the brink of the apocalypse. Below, we share trailers for these films, along with Sansour’s introduction. You can stream the films here:
A Space Exodus | Nation Estate
In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain
Larissa Sansour
The Trilogy
![Fady Joudah’s <em>[…]</em> Dares Us to Listen to Palestinian Words—and Silences](https://themarkaz.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/SAMAH-SHIHADI-DAIR-AL-QASSI-charcoal-on-paper-100x60-cm-2023-courtesy-Tabari-Artspace-300x180.jpg)
