Auður Ómarsdóttir: KASBOMM

KASBOMM - Let’s imagine a pile, a mass that reminds us of the aftermath of an explosion which seems absolutely unmanageable to navigate through. You need to get through this heap because there is something underneath that you are missing. In order to move around or through this pile, you will need to bend and bow your body. Thinking will not aid you on this journey, in fact your thoughts will work against you. During this transformation of trusting only your body, imagination gets lost and darkness seems to take over your view. You see memories being projected as foggy images and you try to figure out if they are actual or premonitions. You keep going. More precisely, your hands continue for you. You feel the lack of sleep and you need to trust that your hands will follow the automatic impulses of the nervous system to move and lead you through this heap. When you realise you are daydreaming and have been sitting in a chair for an hour, you feel something moving in your abdomen. The movements magnify and you follow, feel the spur of new energy piercing your being. You start seeing contradictions in your work and you doubt your independence. You realise that this life inside of you controls you. Ideas enter your imagination again, yet they are changed, distant and unreachable. This life that controls you speaks through you and says:

The works in the exhibition KASBOMM reflect the artist’s process during the past months which have been highly influenced by the state of being pregnant. The exhibition is in many ways a narrative of how pregnancy has influenced the artist into navigating new ways of experience and how she depicts them into visual language. KASBOMM is Auður’s fourteenth solo exhibition. She has been actively exhibiting both in Iceland and internationally during the past decade. Auður Ómarsdóttir (b.1988) is a multidisciplinary artist that works mainly in painting, sculpture, photography and drawing. Physicality and observance play a large role in her narrative and inspiration often begins with personal events, elements in her close environment or from the internet, which she disguises in her visual language. Auður’s work often deals with the attempt to bring harmony in contrasting themes. She consciously works across styles and considers contradiction as a primary force in her work process, as she experiences the world being paradoxical and coincidental. Auður received a bachelor's degree from the Iceland University of the Arts in 2013 and a MA degree from KMD, the Art Academy in Bergen, Norway in 2021. Auður was nominated for the encouragement award of the Icelandic Art Prize in 2018 and sits on the board of The Living Art Museum. Auður lives and works in Reykjavík.