Exhibition opening and performance: Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen
Oslo Kunstforening is pleased to invite you to the opening of a solo exhibition by Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, entitled A Chimera Full of Love, Guilt and Frozen Vigor. You are welcome to join us for the opening and performance on Thursday 28 May, 18–20, at Oslo Kunstforening.
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (b. 1970) is considered one of Denmark's leading contemporary artists, and this is the first time she is being presented in a major exhibition in Norway. The exhibition encompasses both earlier works and new productions, including a performance developed specifically for the occasion, to be presented during the opening.
The exhibition forms part of the celebration of Oslo Kunstforening's 190th anniversary – and the establishment of Norway's first art institution in 1836. On the ground floor of our premises, visitors are invited into an in-depth exploration of the institution's archive and exhibition history. Here, the historic plasterwork ceiling – decorated with mythical creatures and virtues drawn from the seventeenth-century worldview – serves as a point of departure for Cuenca Rasmussen's presentation of her own archival material. This material reflects an extensive artistic practice in which questions of identity, representation, and staging are central. The practice frequently takes the form of performance, which is carried forward and transformed into a range of media including video, photography, sculpture, and installation. In this way, spaces are created in which existential questions come to the fore, and formal strategies are brought into play in dialogue with lived experience.
The thematic concerns of the exhibition are rooted in the figure of the chimera – a fire-breathing hybrid creature from Greek mythology, composed of lion, serpent, and goat within a single body. The figure operates both as a metaphor for fragmented identity and as an image of the coexistence of opposites and the layers of a personal history. Cuenca Rasmussen was born in Manila, the Philippines, where she lived until the age of eight, before her family relocated to Denmark. Across geographical and cultural contexts, the chimera becomes a recurring motif for shifting political, cultural, and personal experiences, and for what she herself describes as in-betweenness – a liminal condition that resists fixed placement and categorisation.
The exhibition spans two decades of artistic production, from the early performance work Cock Fight Song (2006) to more recent works such as the sculpture Meteorite (2019), the video work 7 Stages of Gynophobia (2023), and the performance Chimera Power (2026), alongside new sculptures and photographs. Together, the works attest to a sustained exploration of art-historical hegemonies, patriarchal structures, and personal experiences relating to language and diaspora, in which the humorous and the serious operate side by side.
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (b. 1970, Manila) is a Danish-Filipino, internationally recognised artist who has presented exhibitions and performances worldwide. She has exhibited and performed at, among other venues, Kiasma in Helsinki, Brooklyn Museum in New York, Tate Modern in London, Performa in New York, the Venice Biennale, Thessaloniki Biennale, Busan Biennale, The Drawing Room, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, and National Gallery Singapore. Cuenca Rasmussen is represented in collections including ARoS, Ordrupgaard, Hempel Museum, Rønnebæksholm, Borås Konstmuseum, HAM Helsinki, Horsens Kunstmuseum, Museet for Samtidskunst Roskilde, HeART; Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning, the Danish Arts Foundation, Statens Museum for Kunst, Malmö Konstmuseum, Kiasma – Museum of Modern Art Helsinki, and Odense Bys Kunstfond.
The exhibition is supported by The New Carlsberg Foundation, Arts Council Norway, the Danish Arts Foundation, and Knud Højgaards Fond.