Monday 22 February 2010

ARTIST TALK: NADA PRLJA: IN SEARCH FOR BLACK COMMUNISM, 9TH MARCH AT 6.30PM

Tuesday 9th MARCH 2010
6.30 - 7.30pm, Room 433 (4th Floor)
University College London, SSEES, 16 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW**

Heavily influenced by the Black Wave or dissident Yugoslav cinema of her childhood, artist Nada Prlja considers its unique balancing act between iconoclasm and idealism, individualism and communism to be exemplary.

In the presentation on TUESDAY 9TH MARCH at 6.30pm, Prlja will talk about the cultural context of communist Yugoslavia and its mutation into a consumer culture, a shift that her artwork pivots on.


image: ONE CITY TWO VOICES - NP, 2007
Site Specific Installation
Sizes variable, metal construction 3x3m, 120 light bulbs.
Exhibited at: National Gallery of Macedonia, Skopje


"Nada Prlja was born in Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia in 1971, and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Skopje, Macedonia. She has lived and worked in London since she moved here in 1999. She was one of the few artists to graduate with MPhil degree in Royal College of Art in 2002 who was clearly political in her intent. Her work has progressed with a fearless determination since then.

Her work deals with complex situations of inequality within different political, economic or religious formations. Working across media (video, installation and a wide range of material including flags and neon) her artistic work is site-specific, as well as ideas rather than media driven.

Prlja claims to come from a ‘Red Bourgeois’ background but would like to live now in ‘black communism’." Text by Stefan Szczelkun

*Artist Talks series organised by artist Margareta Kern for the Centre for South-East European Studies.

** UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), 16 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW. Nearest tube: Euston Square Underground, Euston Train and Underground Station. Room 433, is on the 4th floor (will be signposted). The talk is open and free to all. Followed by the wine reception.*

www.seriousinterests.co.uk

www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/seecent.htm



View Larger Map