Watch In Vitro by artist Larissa Sansour, which premiered at the 2019 Venice Biennnale. In Vitro is screened for this weekend only, alongside the artist’s sci fi trilogy In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain, Nation Estate and A Space Exodus.

In Vitro (2019)
A sci-fi film filmed in black and white. In Vitro set in the aftermath of an eco-disaster. An abandoned nuclear reactor under the biblical town of Bethlehem has been converted into an enormous orchard. Using heirloom seeds collected in the final days before the apocalypse, a group of scientists prepare to replant the soil above. In Vitro was shown at the 2019 Biennale for which Sansour was selected to represent Denmark.

In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2016)
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 lands. Combining live motion and CGI, the film explores the role of myth for history, fact and national identity.

Nation Estate (2012)
With its glossy mixture of computer-generated imagery, live actors and an arabesque electronica soundtrack, Nation Estate explores a vertical solution to Palestinian statehood. Palestinians have their state in the form of a single skyscraper: The Nation Estate.

A Space Exodus (2008)
The film follows the artist on a phantasmagoric journey through a universe echoing themes in Stanley Kubrick, concerns for human evolution, progress and technology. In her film, Sansour posits the idea of a first Palestinian into space.

Larissa Sansour (b. 1973) was born in East Jerusalem, Palestine. She lives and works in London. Her work is interdisciplinary, using video, photography, sculpture and installation. She describes the central theme of her work as exploring ‘the tug and pull of fiction and reality in a Middle-Eastern context’, and has used both science fiction and comic books to explore this.

The Mosaic Rooms’s exhibition of Larissa Sansour’s In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain took place in 2016. It was the first London exhibition of the artist’s work.

Image: Larissa Sansour, In Vitro (2019). Courtesy of Larissa Sansour.