Mobile Mirrors

source: christianlarsense

For her latest exhibition Mobile Mirrors, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (b. 1970) has created a poetic space revolving around the group of sculptures Outer Reflection #1-4. Four mannequins, all clad in a mosaic of mirror shards, stand in different poses. Covering the walls, floor and ceiling is an intricate pattern of reflections. Photographic images of a person, dressed in the same mirror suit as the sculptures and moving through commercial spaces in South-East Asia, as well as a performance video recorded at Den Frie, Copenhagen, add to the installation. The scope is global.

Conversely, the mannequin is globally accepted as an essential part of today’s retail industry. Wherever we go, its appearance and purpose remain the same. We use the mannequin as a surface onto which we project our own selves, while at the same time we internalize the beauty ideals it represents. We become it – it becomes us.

Cuenca Rasmussen’s sculptures construct a poetic and at the same time pointed criticism of this relationship between object and beholder/consumer. The mirror surfaces of the mannequins turn our gaze back onto ourselves, forcing us to become aware of our own bodies and consumption habits. This way revealed, we can see ourselves as part of a much larger system, as complex and chaotic as ever the sculptures’ reflections on the walls.

The exhibition Mobile Mirrors is the artist’s second solo show at Christian Larsen. Earlier in 2013 she was awarded Denmark’s most prestigious art award, the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl Nielsen Grant.