Elise Rasmussen

Elise Rasmussen

Elise Rasmussen is a research-based artist working with lens-based media. She has exhibited, performed and screened her work internationally including venues such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum, Pioneer Works (New York), Night Gallery, JOAN (Los Angeles), Institute of Modern Art, University of Queensland Art Museum (Brisbane), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Belvedere 21 (Vienna), Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), Dazibao (Montreal), Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton), the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto and Gallery 44 (Toronto). Elise received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a Merit Scholarship and has been an artist in residence at a number of institutions including the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), La Becque (Switzerland), the Nirox Foundation (South Africa), LMCC (New York), the Banff Centre (Banff, Alberta) and was a 2016 Fellow in the Art & Law Program (New York). Elise has been written about in publications such as Artforum, ArtReview, Art in America, BOMB Magazine, and the New Inquiry, and has received grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, NYFA/NYSCA, and the American Austrian Foundation. Born in Edmonton, Canada, Elise lives in Los Angeles, California.

in the Valley of the Moon investigates the paradoxes of scientific developments and ecological innovations, linking together rare mineral deposits in Chile’s Atacama Desert, food production, chemical warfare and the environmental toll of green energy. The work centres around current trends in electronic and electric vehicle industries and how this green revolution is fed by natural resources from fragile ecosystems such as the Atacama, a site that has a long legacy of being exploited for its mineral wealth. The piece comments on what is gained and lost in the name of technological progress, questions who benefits from our current systems, and contemplates the many complexities of the climate crisis and the use of finite resources in our global world.

Image: Elise Rasmussen, in the Valley of the Moon, still from 16mm film transferred to 4K, Colour, Surround Sound, TRT: 19:50, 2022