ASCENSIO: AETERNA MULTIVERSE, Liberté Grace, 2023, Lambda C-type Photograph
‘ASCENSIO: AETERNA MULTIVERSE’ (2023) is a new work exploring timelessness and the fall of power.
What if time did not exist and we could access everything that we are and were — before, during, and after birth — even death?
‘ASCENSIO: AETERNA MULTIVERSE’ imagines a fantasy of total freedom beyond human consciousness — the experience of waking up from being human into becoming an awakened and enlightened multi-dimensional being — unlimited by time, space, or physical reality.
In the void of infinite potentials, a fictional persona called 'ASCENSIO', explores its infinite inner universe and multi-dimensional nature; realising its unlimited soul. Shot in France with award-winning performer, Kate Sherman, ‘ASCENSIO: AETERNA MULTIVERSE’ is a singular work by contemporary artist Liberté Grace, whose art practice explores concepts of freedom through new consciousness perspectives.
Together, Sherman and Grace previously shot art video installation ‘The Perfect Boy Myth’, which was selected to showcase at Art Basel and won The Churchie National Emerging Art Prize (2013).
Throughout the ages, the colour gold has been used as a symbol of wealth and status. In many ancient civilisations, including Egypt, Greece, and Rome, gold was reserved for royalty, nobility, and religious purposes. Over time, the colour of gold was often considered to be a symbol of power.
However, in looking beyond the societal concepts that have defined gold, within nature, gold can also be seen in the sun and as pure light that falls and supports the flowering and growth of life in all its forms. It is the glint within honey, the irridescent halo surrounding flowers, mountains, the crest of ocean waves... even the romantic glow upon a lover's cheek.
Within the 'ASCENSIO' series, gold represents the distillation of wisdom — the honey of the soul. Within the golden kaleidoscope of Ascensio's inner being — a grand dance within the soul self continues in many "rooms" within — as the soul continues to fall in love with itself, and every story that has brought it wisdom.
Beyond judgements of light and dark, the soul, in its infinite compassion for itself and all its creative forms, and as an expression of true love, distills each of its experiences — both light and dark — into its own ever-expanding realisation of itself through human experience.