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. 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, which refuses to compromise with the demands of an increasingly commercial art world.
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.
Biography
Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina. Lived in Skopje, Macedonia 1981-1999. Since 1998 lives and works in Skopje and 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).
Prlja took part in following Biennales: 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.
Prlja is Board Member of Open Space - Open System, Vienna, Austria.
The exhibition Say what ?, curated by Gülsen Bal and Walter Seidl, gathers a variety of artistic stances around the question of how to relate to the terms of community and belonging in light of the fact that the debates on the conditions of global capitalism affect different countries in different ways.
Even in its most basic form, the question raised by the exhibition title revolves around countless issues of subjecthood and subject positions raised by ideas such as exceptionalism, inclusion, exclusion, participation, and agency of various types. The failure of history, coupled with a fading consciousness of personal interests, leads to representation under the umbrella of internationalism, reinforcing the familiar process that unfolds as a result of flogging the multiculturalist image of belonging to the "...