Elise Rasmussen is a research-based artist working with lens-based media. She examines the ways that history is recorded and how this reflects implicit power structures embedded in fields of cultural production and the world at large. Rasmussen works primarily in photography, video and performance and her projects have a strong conceptual foundation, one that goes beyond the aesthetics of the medium. The discovery of lesser-known histories involves intense research in an attempt to uncover stories overlooked or under recognized by the hegemonic record. She looks for threads of intersection at which point she records her investigations through varying artistic strategies in an attempt to reimagine a new narrative, creating works that address larger concepts related to notions of power, value systems, and the relationship between the personal and political.

Rasmussen has exhibited, performed and screened her work internationally at venues such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum, Pioneer Works (New York), Night Gallery (Los Angeles), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Dazibao (Montreal), Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto (Scarborough), and ESP | Erin Stump Projects (Toronto). She has been an artist in residence at a number of institutions including the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), the Nirox Foundation (South Africa), La Becque (Switzerland), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (New York), Shandaken Projects (Storm King), SOMA (Mexico City), the Banff Centre (Alberta) and was a 2016 Fellow in the Art & Law Program (New York). Born in Edmonton, Canada, Rasmussen lives in Brooklyn, NY and Los Angeles, CA. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.