This photo shows the artist Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen and her performance at Glyptoteket in Copenhagen, which has become part of my article, 2025.

The following excerpt comes from my article-in-progress “Performance Art as the Contemporary Agora of Political Action”. I wanted to share it here as a case study, prior to the completion and full publication of the article, due to Lilibeth’s performance on September 25 in Faaborg museum.
@lilibethcuencarasmussenis is a danish artist known for her work in performance art and visual art.

The framework Body → Identity → Power → Negotiation → Politics illustrates how performance art transforms the body into a critical site where individual experience intersects with broader social structures. The body functions as a carrier of identity, an identity that is socially constructed and often constrained by mechanisms of power. Within the performative context, these forces enter into a dynamic negotiation, producing a space for dialogue and redefinition. This process discloses the political dimension of embodiment and positions both body and performance as forms of the contemporary agora.
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen’s performance “The Mitochondrial Eve”, which these days has being staged in three museums (the Vigeland Museum in Oslo, the Glyptotek in Copenhagen, and the Faaborg Museum in 25 september), enacts this path with precision for me and for my article. Rasmussen has situated her body within these institutional frameworks, She embodies the contested identities of womanhood and motherhood, transforming personal experience into cultural critique. Her performance simultaneously challenges the canonical authority of the museum and the social expectations surrounding femininity. Here I clearly see how Rasmussen recalls Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, since she shows that womanhood and motherhood are not essential truths but enacted positions produced through repetition and social norms. In this sense, her body itself becomes a political text for discourse. Here the body is not merely an instrument, but the artwork itself, the very center and site of negotiation.

At the same time, her intervention connects with the idea of art’s critical autonomy, which necessitates a reference to Theodor W. Adorno’s reflections. For this performance “The Mitochondrial Eve”, while being staged inside the museum, destabilizes the ideological authority of the institution and shows how art can both inhabit institutional structures and simultaneously reveal and disrupt their structural limitations. Adorno argued that the critical value of art lies in its “autonomy”, by maintaining distance from instrumental and market functions, art can create the possibility of resisting ideological domination. Yet this autonomy does not mean a complete disjunction from institutions, rather, art, precisely in its presence within institutions (such as the museums), can expose their ideological structures by generating tension and dissonance. Rasmussen’s performance creates exactly such a situation, within the museum, using its symbolic authority, she unsettles ingrained narratives of womanhood and motherhood that are deeply rooted in society. In this way, the work both relies on the authority of the museum and simultaneously challenges it, a paradoxical condition that demonstrates how artistic autonomy is, in fact, a field of tension between institutional dependency and critical force.

I belive by transforming these cultural institutions into arenas of deliberation and opening doors for dynamic negotiation, Rasmussen turns them into a kind of agora, what Habermas calls the public sphere. In this sphere, the boundary between the private and the public is shifted, and individual experiences, such as the body, gender, and motherhood, become subjects of collective discussion and public judgment. This public sphere becomes even more powerful when she reads the texts aloud in the Agora she created within the Glyptotek Museum. I mean from this perspective, the museum is transformed into a contemporary agora, a place where questions of gender, reproduction, and choice are not only represented but collectively exposed, contested, and politicized. I will return to these discussions in greater depth in the full version of my article.
Sayeh Kazemi
06/09/2025 Copenhagen

References

1. Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen – Danish performance and visual artist.
   • Performance: “The Mitochondrial Eve”
   • Shown at: Vigeland Museum (Oslo), Glyptotek (Copenhagen), Faaborg Museum (25 September).
2. Judith Butler – Philosopher and gender theorist.
   • Concept: Gender Performativity
   • Main idea: Gender is not an essential truth but a performance enacted through repetition and social norms.
   • (Key work: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990.)
3. Theodor W. Adorno – Philosopher and cultural critic.
   • Concept: Art’s Critical Autonomy
   • Main idea: Art resists ideological domination by maintaining autonomy from market and institutional functions.
   • (Key work: Aesthetic Theory, 1970.)
4. Jürgen Habermas – Philosopher and sociologist.
   • Concept: The Public Sphere (Öffentlichkeit)
   • Main idea: A space where private individuals engage in rational-critical debate about public matters.
   • (Key work: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1962.)
5. Agora (Ancient Greek Concept)
   • Meaning: The civic and public space for encounter, discussion, and political participation.
   • In your text: Reinterpreted as “the contemporary agora” created through performance art.
6. Sayeh Kazemi’s Framework
   • Body → Identity → Power → Negotiation → Politics
   • Original conceptual model illustrating how performance transforms the body into a political and social site of negotiation.