IN COMMON: A double solo exhibition by Isabella Pers and Nada Prlja

With IN COMMON, the double solo exhibition by Isabella Pers and Nada Prlja, curated by Laura Cherubini, aA29 Project Room in Milan presents a series of recent and new works by the artists, created specifically for the gallery spaces, from December 3rd, 2021 to February 13th, 2022. 

With reference to the exploration of a common ground (as also reflected in the title of the exhibition), developed on the spatial and temporal axes at multiple levels of interconnection and coexistence with all living beings, the two artists - with their different yet complementary gazes - weave a dialogue and a reflection on important contemporary social and environmental issues. Starting with observations of our fragile and complex present, Isabella Pers and Nada Prlja analyze the media superstructures that influence our perception.

Isabella Pers' works interpret climate change through the language of water and the connection of situations that are similar in their circumstances, despite being physically very distant from one another: on the one hand, the heavenly atolls of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean, suffering the effects of a sudden rise in the sea level and, on the other hand, the territory of northeastern Italy, which was violently hit, in October 2018 by the storm Vaia, destroying tens of thousands of hectares of alpine forests. The artworks represent a time that is no longer able to reconnect with its cycle of eternal return, but instead extends linearly and uncontrollably across distant geographies and everyday circumstances without a conscience, resulting in an image that is as impossible as it is real, where 'the tree is upside down, with its roots in the air.' (Pierluigi Cappello, Piove).  

Nada Prlja gives voice to a critique of the art system itself, by questioning when, artists will change the modes of production of their own artworks, so as to avoid waste. The artist repeatedly recycles her works in order to create new artworks, resulting in a layering of content which enriches the existing works with new meanings and concepts. Among the artworks in the exhibition, the installation Disaster Diary II (2021) reuses and transforms the previous work Non Commercial Agency (2004), a project that criticizes and re-examines the content of information provided to the public by newspapers. By painting, onto selected sheets of this work, the dates and places of natural catastrophes that have occurred globally between 2004 and 2021, the artist merges the two works and they become one, reflecting a realistic image of the world situation and the unnatural overproduction of capitalism. 

The common ground of IN COMMON lies in the deconstruction of the typical practices of the mass media - as in the re-elaborated version of the web pages of Isabella Pers's series of drawings Te aba, or in the over-painted pages of the newspapers that make up Nada Prlja's Disaster Diary II. The common ground lies in the new questions the artists express with their works, through a reflection on the use and misuse of information and through the search of a critical reading of the present time. 

IN COMMON shows a form of resistance inside and outside the art world: thinking of new forms of common life, is a starting point from which to open up to an alternative future, which can still be imagined. 

The publication of an accompanying exhibition catalogue will present, through various images and critical texts - including that of the curator Laura Cherubini - the works displayed in the exhibition, together with other selected works, providing thereby a deeper reflection of the research being undertaken by the two artists.