At the World Museum in East, located in the former Tropenmuseum on Linnaeus Street, Larissa Sansour's first Dutch solo exhibition will open in late April. Born in East Jerusalem in 1973, she works primarily with film, photography and installation, and has now built an impressive track record. In 2019, she represented Denmark at the 58th Venice Biennale. A year later, she won the Jarman Award in the United Kingdom, one of the most renowned awards for cinematography. Her work is in the collections of Tate Modern, MoMA and Centre Pompidou.
The highlight of the exhibition is the world premiere of A Sunken Tale of Losses Delayed (2026). The film was specially commissioned by the World Museum and made in collaboration with Danish writer and director Søren Lind, with whom Sansour has worked closely for some time. In addition to this new film, two earlier works will also be on view: In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2016), a film about nation-construction through fictional archaeology, and Familiar Phantoms (2022), an exploration of childhood nostalgia, trauma, love and resilience.
The exhibition is not called Rogue Agents of History for nothing. Central figures are pirates, ghosts and guerrilla archaeologists who appropriate, disrupt and reload historical narratives. Sansour works from the Palestinian context, but the themes she addresses are broader: identity, memory, loss and the question of where you belong. She does so by deliberately mixing up eras. The Ottoman era, the Israeli occupation and fictional future scenarios flow together in her work. Fact and fiction, documentary and myth: the line blurs.
Pirates, ghosts and guerrilla archaeologists appropriate, disrupt and reload historical narratives.
Rogue Agents of History can be seen from April 24 to September 27, 2026. Over five months, so there's no reason to delay. The World Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, and also on Mondays during national school vacations. For those who live in East: the museum is a stone's throw away and this is exactly the kind of exhibition you don't have to go downtown for.
Location
World Museum: World cultures and colonial history
Large museum in East with global collection, critical story of colonialism and many family exhibitions
The World Museum in East is part of a larger museum group: the National Museum of World Cultures. Within that group, it hangs out with Wereldmuseum Leiden, Wereldmuseum Rotterdam and Wereldmuseum Berg en Dal. The institution manages an extensive ethnographic collection of more than 175,000 objects, plus large photo and document archives. These include many pieces from former Dutch ...
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