Should I Stay or Should I Go Solo exhibition by Nada Prlja at NI Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia 2008 Curator Zoran Petrovski Prlja's project Should I Stay or Should I Go is a brutal illustration of the socio-political processes that belong to the current reality of less self-sufficient, financially dependent countries. By raising issues related to fair trade in this post-industrial society, the project strives to communicate with and to alert the public about the workers' reality of today, with the intention of raising the general awareness and of making a direct change in contemporary society, by blurring the division between financially stronger and weaker societies. For the opening evening performance, an industrial production line will be relocated to the main space of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, Macedonia, where employees from MakJeans (one of numerous 'sewing factories' in the Macedonian textile industry) and the artist Nada Prlja herself, will produce a large number of T-shirts, while simulating the current conditions of such textile industries in Macedonia. The exhibition's title, Should I Stay or Should I Go represents the dilemma embedded within the workers' reality: little hope of progress in the local industry, in which many human rights legislations are being disregarded (long working hours, low salaries, low safety conditions, etc) and the workers' desperate resolution to emigrate elsewhere - in many cases illegally - in the search for better conditions and a better future. To represent the reality of emigrants, Prlja exhibits four videos filmed in London, in which the artist empathizes with the emigrants' situation and the difficulties, complications and disappointments that can occur while trying to adopt something unknown and otherwise foreign to themselves.
About the Author: Prlja is an artist whose work deals with the complex situations of inequality and injustice in societies, ranging from political to economic issues. Using different media, her projects are multi layered, site or condition specific. Nada Prlja was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina. Lived in Skopje, Macedonia from 1981 to 1999. Since 1998 lives and works in London, UK. She received an MPhil research degree from the Royal College of Arts, London, after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Skopje, Macedonia (and previously from the National High School of Fine Art in Skopje). She works mainly in installation, video installation, live art, public art projects. Prlja's main aim is to affect society in the most direct of ways, it challenges critical discourse around issues of current politics, nationalism, transition of ex socialist countries, human rights, migration, etc. at the same time, her work maintains a conceptual and aesthetic authenticity. Prlja's work adopts a site's context specific quality or certain kind of social conditions, which may vary from project to project in the choice of media deemed most appropriate. Prlja took part in following Biennales: IV Bienal del Fin del Mundo de Arte Contemporare, Chile/Argentina (2015); 5th Moscow Biennale, (Film Program) Moscow (2013); 7th Berlin Biennale, Berlin (2012), Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010) and International Printmaking Biennale, Ljubljana (2009). She has been working occasionally in public domain, here recent public interventions were for 7th Berlin Biennale (2012), ORF FUNKHAUS, Vienna (2009), Marble Arch Gate, London (2007), etc. She created number of solo shows and participated in number of group shows internationally.