A Chimera Full of Love, Guilt and Frozen Vigor

Oslo Kunstforening is pleased to invite you to the opening of the solo exhibition "A Chimera Full of Love, Guilt and Frozen Vigor" by Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen. Join us for the opening on Thursday 28 May, 18–20, at Oslo Kunstforening.

At 18:15 precisely, the performance Chimera Power (2026) will be presented, in collaboration with musician Frode Haltli. Chimera Power is a newly staged performance in which text, music, and interaction unfold across three different rooms, times, and moods.

Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (b. 1970) is 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.

The exhibition is part of the celebration of Oslo Kunstforening's 190th anniversary and the founding of Norway's first art institution in 1836. On the ground floor of our premises, a deep dive into the institution's archive and exhibition history is presented. Here, the historic plaster ceiling – adorned with mythical creatures and virtues 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 various media such as video, photography, sculpture, and installation. In this way, spaces are created in which existential concerns come to the fore, and formal strategies are set in play in encounter with lived experience.

The thematic focus of the exhibition takes its starting point in the concept of the chimera – a fire-breathing hybrid figure from Greek mythology, composed of lion, serpent, and goat in one and the same body. The figure functions both as a metaphor for fragmented identity and as an image of the coexistence of contradictions and the layers within a personal history. Cuenca Rasmussen was born in Manila in the Philippines, where she lived until the age of eight, before her family moved 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 – an intermediate state that resists unambiguous placement and categorisation.

The exhibition spans over 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. The self-portrait stands as a recurring motif in dialogue with various forms of materiality – whether as a rotating sculpture, a fragmented body, or a figure carved in acacia wood. Taken together, the works bear witness 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 acclaimed artist who has presented exhibitions and performances worldwide. Cuenca Rasmussen lives in Copenhagen and is educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Over the past decade she has worked as a professor at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen. 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 in Gothenburg, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, and National Gallery Singapore. Cuenca Rasmussen is represented in collections including ARoS, Ordrupgaard, Rønnebæksholm, Borås Konstmuseum, Helsinki Art Museum, Horsens Kunstmuseum, Museet for Samtidskunst Roskilde, HEART Museum of Contemporary Art Herning, Statens Kunstfond, Statens Museum for Kunst, Malmö Konstmuseum, KIASMA Museum of Modern Art Helsinki, and Odense Bys Kunstfond.

The exhibition is supported by Ny Carlsbergfondet, Arts Council Norway, Statens Kunstfond, and Knud Højgaards Fond. The opening event is part of Oslo Art Weekend.