Nada Prlja

NADA PRLJA

project realized RAVE 2023: I WAS BORN TO FLY

During the days of the 2023 autumn equinox, a series of temporary banners were positioned along the streets of the village of Soleschiano, with the following phrases: I was born to fly, I want to live more than 42 days, I want to see the sunlight and the night sky and other similar exclamations. Those texts reflect the experiences of different animals (pigs, horses, chicken, fish, etc.) and ‘speak’ of animals’ fear, grievance and sorrow, in order to give a voice to the animals used in food production, the beauty or entertainment industries and others. This project encourages us to move beyond the perception of animals as commodities and to rightfully see and consider them as fellow inhabitants of this planet.

The site-specific public art project by artist Nada Prlja, entitled I was born to fly is a core project of this year’s single-artist-in-residence program by RAVE East Village Artist Residency.

This year’s project challenges the notion that nature, as a reservoir of resources, should be treated as a separate issue, or as being of lesser significance than societal or political questions. Therefore, imagining a multi-species manifestation in which no voice is too weak, the works will interact in different languages, including Italian, English, Slovenian and Friulian, since animal suffering knows no linguistic, cultural or national boundaries. In this art work, politics, society, individuals and natural ecosystems intermingle, providing thereby a well-deserved platform to the state of nature.

On the day of the autumnal equinox (which astronomically speaking this year falls on Friday 23 September), the hours of light are equivalent to those of darkness. In the border between night and day, in the margins between different languages and in the diversity between various species, lies the search for an egalitarian balance that is no longer anthropocentric.

The project asks for the recognition of the sovereign role of nature, as a structure encompassing everything and everyone. Societal or political structures need to embrace an understanding of environmental awareness, not only within the realm of human self-sustainability, nor as a sole criticism of over-production, pollution and climate change, but rather as a playground for the reinvention of interactions between animal and humans, plants, the soil, the sea, etc., in order to rethink the ethical underpinnings of existence in the world.

The spatial installation with the temporary banners of I was born to fly was displayed at the RAVE residency (opening Sunday 24 September, 2023): a recently completed multispecies artistic manifestation where no being remains silent, and where no voice is too weak. Each non-human animal thus presents their complaints to the humans – the species at the hands of which they have been subjugated, humiliated, violated, tortured and even killed.

All participants at the opening had the opportunity to be next to trees that were saved from felling and animals that have been rescued from the slaughterhouse.

A related talk and panel discussion took place in Trieste at Trieste Contemporanea (via del Monte 2/1, Trieste) on 23.09.23, featuring the participants: Nada Prlja, RAVE artist-in-residence 2023 (Copenhagen / Skopje), Urška Jurman, director Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory (Ljubljana), Tiziana Pers, artist, co-founder e co-director of RAVE East Village Artist Residency (Udine), Gabi Scardi, independent curator and contemporary art critic (Milano), and moderated by Giuliana Carbi Jesurun ofTrieste Contemporanea.