SOLO 2018

Solo 2018: Rodo Abdirahman

"We reward Rodo Abdirahman for the potential of an artistically promising video production and hope the award will generate further attention to the young artist's work and will motivate her to continue to develop as an artist."

How last year's jury (2017) wrote about the young Rodo Abdirahman. At just 23, she has only just begun her artistic work. Rodo Abdirahman was born in Somalia and came to Denmark with his family as a small one. The video work that the artist shows at this year's Spring Exhibition is called Bygd, and the inspiration for the work is drawn from a trip back to the country of birth Somalia in the summer of 2017, to the town of Kismayoo.

In the video, two young twin girls are dressed in fine dresses, and their deep conversation appears quite adult. This appearance stands in stark contrast to the moments when they look out at the viewer, or as in the last half of the video, where they laugh and it all becomes poignantly childish.

The eggs, which are alternately broken, have a special sexual charge, which in this context will seem grotesque because the girls are so young. But at the same time, the seance makes perfect sense – precisely because of the contrast between the child and adult worlds. The video works, in an innocent way, both disturbing and grotesque, and in line with the repetitive of the eggs being smashed and the almost theatrical castes, the film appears as an absurd mix of the two worlds.