LILIBETH CUENCA RASMUSSEN
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussens (b. 1970, Philippines) praxis is based on performance art, also transformed to different materials and media such as video, photography, sculpture and installations.
Cuencas productions involve the body, scripted texts, songs, composed music as well as intricate visual elements as costumes used as set design. She gathers, adapts, and universalizes her narratives in both a critical and humorous approach in regards to issues such as identity, culture, religion, gender and social relations.
Cuenca is educated from The Royal Danish Art Academy (2002) and has since 2016 worked as a professor at The Art Academy (KMD) in Bergen. She is widely represented in museums and other public collections.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
I've borrowed the exhibition title from a hip hop, suggestive song by Tommy Genesis. It repeats this sentence and states almost logically that if 'man', meaning human, is a man, women must be gods. It got me thinking about history (and the very curated writing of history), mythologies, religions, and politics. Narratives around women, and so the self and gender, are central points for all four artists. I wanted to fill the gallery with 'cool female energy' and make a point out of it. The four artists embody exactly that.
Although the exhibition title may indicate that this is a group exhibition, it must not be understood that way. Rather, see it as four parallel solo exhibitions with four prominent artistries. The curatorial approach is simple, but at the same time complicated. These four artists have been chosen because they, in their own way, and over a long period of time, with their artistic work have examined what it means to them to be a woman. It is about myths, ideas, prejudices, one's own and other people's expectations, bodily pleasure and change, social control and shame. So, think of the exhibitions as four books, written by individual authors, with different lives, but which make sense to read in light of each other.
Curated by Simone Aalbæk Høyersten