Danish-Palestinian artist and filmmaker Larissa Sansour has since the early 2000s developed a consistent practice around issues of futurism, popular culture, diaspora, and memory. Born in Bethlehem and presently residing in London, much of her work has a political ethos, using science fiction and humour to engage with a contemporary gaze on occupied Palestine. Even though Sansour’s films are disarming and humorous they tell of deep personal and national trauma, and she pulls no punches in her critique of Israel and Palestine’s contemporary predicament.
In 2019, Sansour represented Denmark at the 58th Venice Biennial (she is a Danish citizen and used to live in Copenhagen). Her films are often co-written and jointly directed with her husband, philosopher and writer Søren Lind. Her political stance has formerly led to attempts at censorship both in Switzerland in 2011 and in England in 2018 (see here). At a time of war and intense pressure on public discourse, Sansour’s science-fiction inspired films seem to open up an uncanny futuristic space.
Sansour’s work is currently in high demand, and she has two major shows opening in the Nordics. Indigo is the Colour of Grief opened last week at Gothenburg Konsthall, and the eponymous retrospective Larissa Sansour opens tomorrow, on 9 October, at Amos Rex in Helsinki. In 2025, the Helsinki exhibition will move on to Reykjanes Art Museum, Iceland, and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen.
Kunstkritikk spoke to Sansour about her work and being a Palestinian artist in a time of Israel’s renewed war in Palestine and Lebanon.
You are opening two solo shows in the Nordics at the same time. How come?
Yes, it’s pretty intense. I’m solving problems in Helsinki over the phone while installing here in Gothenburg. It’s schizophrenic. There seems to be some sort of Nordic wave of interest in my work. Next year, the Helsinki exhibition will be shown both at Reykjanes Art Museum in Iceland and Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. I think it is related to the political situation. In the Nordic countries, it seems, there is a more honest debate about what is happening in Palestine. More leniency and interest here than in England, where I live, where the situation is suppressed because the government is adamant and pro-Israeli.
Your earlier films, some of which will be shown at Amos Rex, work with humour and parody, whereas your later films are more serious and darker. Why do think that is?
I needed to adapt to how institutions and curators perceived Palestine at the time. Humour became a way to make the public interested and make my work more universal and disarming. At one stage I did documentary-style films – more serious – but I think that when you go through such a traumatic experience and history as the Palestinian one it is hard to survive without a touch of humour. It was also a way of addressing the Western gaze and to say: “I understand through which lens you perceive my people.” And it was not the right time, in the early 2000s, to delve deep into issues of what it means to be Palestinian. Today, curators and the public are more informed and interested. People have become more attuned to what goes on at the margins. There is a place for in-depth work, and that is why, I think, my work has become longer and, if you will, darker.
In your most recent film, Familiar Phantoms (2023), you turn to the personal. You narrate your family history through a mix of fiction and documentary. Would you like to say something about that turn?
Yes, it felt strange to me to see that it became a film about myself. It is very autobiographical. I work with Søren Lind, my husband. We first conceptualise together, then he writes the dialogue, and I develop the conceptual and the visual. He is more rational than me, whereas I take our work in a more phantasmagorical direction. With Familiar Phantoms, we wanted to explore the workings of memory. We based it on my memories and how they were taken away from their context because of my distancing from the place I come from. It is always hard to trust your childhood memories – things seem bigger, sweeter, brighter – but if you are dislocated the mistrust of your memories is twofold. It was a work about the erasure of culture and place. But when I tried to take out my own personal memory the film became less effective, so we ended up keeping my story. It is strange for me because I do not usually do autobiography, but it is still a film about the fabulation of memory.
It has been a year since the Hamas attack in Israel and Israel’s renewed colonial war on Palestine and Lebanon. How has this extreme violence manifested itself in your work?
What it did was that I went into a very dark hole for a long time. I resurfaced maybe only two months ago, thinking “where have I been?” I had just been following the news and trying to understand how the media narrative works – there is an immense discrepancy between what is happening on the ground and what we hear from the media – to figure out who tells what narrative and who we trust.
I have experienced this kind of violence since I grew up under direct Israeli military rule. I have seen it first-hand, and had to leave Palestine in 1988 during the First Intifada [1987–1993] against the Israeli occupation. What is truly shocking now is the enabling of the situation, especially by the US. There is no will towards a ceasefire. We are heading towards something so dangerous. We are, I feel, entering World War III because there is a complete lack of responsibility in international decision-making. What has happened in the last year has made these issues more blatant. The hypocrisy is right there in front of our eyes.
As narrated in Familiar Phantoms, your father was part of the Palestinian Communist Party that was ideologically resisting the colonial regime. It is tempting to see your work as a continuation of his. You have gone from burning pamphlets in hiding as a child to making films, which makes me curious about how you see the role of art in the Palestinian resistance.
I get asked this question a lot. Art does not have an immediate effect, but if art did not have political power, I do not think I would continue. It is why I do what I do. I feel there is an urgency to talk about these issues. But art can only function according to its own logic. I often get asked to become a sort of political spokesperson for different activist groups, but I find that so irrelevant. I do not want to talk about politics with the same jargon as politicians do. I want to talk about it from a different vantage point. Art does not have the effect of a gun. It is slower.
Your work has previously encountered attempts at censorship. Over the last year, we have seen the same thing with artists, academics, and writers speaking out for Palestine. What has your situation been like? Have you been censored?
The situation calls into question what kind of world we live in. Germany is one thing: you cannot talk about Palestine at all; you cannot wave the Palestinian flag or wear the Palestinian scarf. In Germany, they are myopic and can only think one way, only showing full support for Israel, and since Israel is on Palestinian land, Palestinians cannot be supported in any shape or form.
Unfortunately, we can see more of this happening in England too. Arts Council England, this year, for example, announced that they would not fund any artworks that are political in nature. There was of course an uproar in the art world. And finally, the Arts Council issued an apology. The situation is becoming so ridiculous, and we are inching closer and closer to a place where freedom of speech is not possible at all. It is a scary state of affairs, and it has only gotten worse in the last year.
Have you encountered anything like this working with institutions in the Nordics?
No, not really. I did not experience anything of the sort working with Gothenburg Konsthall or Amos Rex. On the contrary, I have felt encouragement and understanding. I also work a lot in Denmark, since I used to live there, and it is a more rational country. There is a strong awareness not to curb freedom of artistic expression and freedom of speech. At the outset, we seem to talk about a local problem of Palestine and perhaps the Middle East, but it is affecting the whole world. Everywhere I go, I see this trend. People are choosing their friends based on what side they are supporting. It is fair to say that we are indeed going through a major historical moment.
That being the case, where do you see us going from here?
In my films, I combine computer-generated imagery with fictional and archival photography to merge temporalities so that past, present, and future are interwoven. This temporal merger and obfuscation reflects the Palestinian psyche well. Suspended between the Nakba of 1948 and our perpetually dashed hopes for a future state, the Palestinian past and future are constantly trying to make sense of a meaningless present. This attempt at complicating temporality is what I try to embody in my films as well, hoping to expose and renegotiate the current state of affairs from an alternative vantage point.
Indigo is the Colour of Grief at Gothenburg Konsthall is shown from 04 October to 12 Januari 2025. The retrospective Larissa Sansour at Amos Rex in Helsinki is shown from 09 October to 02 Mars 2025.
