Former Hakubutsukan-Dōbutsuen Station

Cristina Lucas was born in Jaén, 1973. She studied at Complutense University of Madrid and the University of California Irvine, then was a resident at Rijksakademie and at ISCP, New York. She currently resides in Madrid. Using multimedia such as photography, video, installation, drawing, and performance, her work explores the possibility for different readings of history and offers better explanations of the present.
One piece focuses on the relationship between religion and art, with her as the artist speaking to three ministers, with light social satire interwoven into video showing how, even though the preachers are ignored by passers-by during Times Square rush hour, they continue to talk about the power and importance of art. With performances of her smashing a replica of Michelangelo’s Moses statue with a hammer, urging viewers to uncover the secret to their own creation, and video of the goddess in Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” played by a half-naked young woman that ends tragically with her being beaten by the men, she raises the issue of gender discrimination in history and art history. "You Can Walk, Too” (2006), shown at the “Astonishing Reality” exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo in 2014, is a comical video of a village dog walking around town on its hind legs, which incorporates irony of women who force themselves to behave like men and toward men themselves. Lucas’s thrilling and critical works have received wide acclaim and are featured at exhibits worldwide.
Lucas received international acclaim for "Pantone-500 + 2007”, a two-dimensional world map tracing changes from the 5th century BC to the present, on collection at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Her exhibit at Ueno Cultural Park Hakubutsukan-Dōbutsuen Station is also based on a map, showing the grand history of the human race that encompasses politics, social structure, and state power.

Cristina Lucas

Artwork Title "Unending Lightning"

The exhibition piece was created through five years of research, using big data and the help of experts all over the world. "Manifesta 12” hosted in Palermo, Italy last year was extoled as the pinnacle of the year in British The Guardian, and the video installation exhibited here has received high acclaim. The bombing of Guernica by German troops with whom General Franco was complicit with during the Spanish Civil War, which resulted in the deaths of many citizens, is famous in Picasso’s work as well. Lucas’s work, spanning six hours and three screens to trace all of the victims of air strikes worldwide since the advent of air strike from1911 to the present, is her life’s work.
The left screen shows how many citizens were victims of air strikes and where, while the center shows close-ups of maps of the region and displays dots to show the scale of the bombing, and the right screen is composed of photographs of the event. For the exhibit in Japan, even more accurate data on Japan on the number of victims across Japan during World War II, including during the Tokyo Air Raids and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, will be reflected in her work through cooperation with Masahiko Yamabe, Senior Researcher at the Research Office for War Damage in the Institute of Politics and Economy of the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage in Koto Ward.