I AM NOT WHAT YOU SEE Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen

Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (b. 1970) works across the media of performance, sculpture, text and video. Born to a Filipino mother and Danish father in the Philippines, she moved to Denmark as a child. Her art is informed by her experiences of dual nationality. Identity, ethnicity, gender, human relationships, religion and social issues are core themes running through Cuenca Rasmussen’s art.

The four large sculptures in the exhibition represent mobile or lightweight housing found in various parts of the world. The exhibition also features a selection of video performances in which Cuenca Rasmussen appears in various roles, uttering statements through the mouths of her characters on subjects ranging from art history’s androcentrism to the contemporary problem of extreme egocentricity. Her sculptures come to life in her Cocktails performance, in which the artist and her fellow performers use them as both costumes and sets.

The sculptures express the idea of nomadic freedom: if your home is portable and can be rebuilt anywhere, it is easy to cross borders and stay mobile, allowing cross-cultural influences, stories and genes to migrate and become intermixed. Cuenca Rasmussen invites us to think about modern-day nomads: Who are they, why do they keep moving, and what do they carry with them? A nomadic identity is mutable, like a costume that can be changed.