Bluecoat, Liverpool’s Centre for the Contemporary Arts, welcomes new exhibition from Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour
Sansour’s new solo exhibition of new work, In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (Saturday 6 May – Saturday 24 June 2017) draws on themes of science fiction, archaeology and politics.
In the Future, They Ate From the Finest Porcelain resides in the cross-section between sci-fi, archaeology and politics.
At the heart of the exhibition is a film, also titled In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain, combining live motion and computer generated imagery that explores the role of myth in history, fact and national identity. In this film, a narrative resistance group makes underground deposits of elaborate porcelain – suggested to belong to an entirely fictional civilisation. Their aim is to influence history and support future claims to their vanishing territories. Once unearthed, this tableware will prove the existence of this counterfeit people. By implementing a myth of its own, their work becomes a historical intervention – de facto creating a nation.
In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain was awarded Best Experimental Short at the Guanajuato International Film Festival.
The exhibition also features artefacts including the porcelain of the title, and a large-scale suspended sculptural installation based on miniature versions of the spaceships glimpsed in the film
Marie-Anne McQuay, Head of Programme at Bluecoat, said: “We are delighted to welcome Larissa back to Bluecoat, after she originally exhibited here in 2013 as part of the group exhibition I Exist in Some Way.
“In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain is a major solo exhibition that celebrates Larissa’s continued success as a leading international artist, and we are proud to have it form part of Bluecoat’s 300th anniversary programme in 2017.”
Larissa Sansour was born in 1973 in East Jerusalem, Palestine, and studied fine arts in London, New York and Copenhagen. Central to her work is the tug and pull between fiction and reality. In her recent body of works, she uses science fiction to address social and political issues in the Middle East.
Recent solo exhibitions include New Art Exchange in Nottingham, Mosaic Rooms in London, Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen, Turku Art Museum in Finland, Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Wolverhamptom Art Gallery and DEPO in Istanbul.
Sansour’s work has featured in the biennials of Istanbul, Busan, Yinchuan and Liverpool. She has exhibited at venues such as Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; LOOP, Seoul; Al Hoash, Jerusalem; Queen Sofia Museum, Madrid; Centre for Photography, Sydney; Cornerhouse, Manchester; Townhouse, Cairo; Maraya Arts Centre, Sharjah, UAE; Empty Quarter, Dubai; Galerie Nationale de Jeu de Paume, Paris; Iniva, London; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou , China; Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark; House of World Cultures, Berlin, and MOCA, Hiroshima.
Sansour currently lives and works in London, UK. More information on the artist is available at http://www.larissasansour.com