Matilde Søes Rasmussen: Unprofessional

The exhibition is based on Rasmussen’s debut book of photographs and texts under the same name, which was published by Disko Bay Books in 2021. The book was nominated for the Photo-Text Book Award at Les Rencontres D’Arles and received a warm reception in, among others, the British Journal of Photography and Vogue Italia.

Unprofessional is a playful and devastating story that begins in a model apartment in a Chinese high-rise. The narrative moves between documentary and fiction, performance and real life, where Rasmussen uses her own body to explore how the strict hierarchies of the modeling world affect her self-image and identity.

The exhibition is a mixture of self-portraits along with still lifes, landscapes, and photographs of model friends. We see fruits cut in half, a naked back, and the model sitting lost in a studio wearing green fur and flippers. Short texts, almost like diary entries, break the rhythm and reveal Rasmussen’s first-hand experiences and reflections.

Rasmussen’s works are performative and darkly humorous, while critically examining issues relating to the body and the body’s relationship to being sold.

Unprofessional is her first institutional solo exhibition.

Matilde Søes Rasmussen (*1990, Alling, DK) is a Danish-Swedish artist and writer whose practice moves freely between text, photography, and film. She has a BFA in Fine Art Photography from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg, has studied at Fatamorgana in Copenhagen, and participated in The International Writers Workshop in Hong Kong. Her work has been shown internationally, most recently at Kunsthal Aarhus (DK), Landskrona Foto (SE) and AS/EM Leipzig (DE), and she has participated in several international residencies.