The text “Want nothing for no money!”, which the artist says is a play on words, was conceived as an ironic reaction against newspaper ads characteristic of the aggressive environment of consumer culture at the start of the new millennium. Like a proper newspaper ad, the text was followed by a phone number through which anyone could reach the curator Ieva Kalniņa.

With the help of industrial alpinists, Monika Pormale’s work was set up during a single night and exhibited on a façade of a building on 25 Raiņa Boulevard. The next night, it was taken down after a request by the building owners, as it was said that the work looked as though it could cause traffic accidents. Neither the organizers, nor the artist Monika Pormale received an official protocol for causing a traffic accidents. Monika Pormale describes the situation thusly: “It’s interesting that such a thing happened during an exhibition for which artists were asked to interpret the advertisement format. Firewalls, walls and shop-windows are oversatiated with ads, this form has become a part of our everyday life.”

The entire initiative was taken down prematurely and photos of its works were later made available to the public at the Daugava Gallery. In 2003, Pormale received the Latvian Artists’ Union award for outstanding creative achievement for her work, Want nothing for no money!

Monika Pormale (1974) is an artist working in scenography, installation art and photography. Since the late 1990s, Monika Pormale has been mainly working as a stage designer and costume artist. Her name is well-known to audiences in Latvia and elsewhere in Europe. The range of Monika Pormale’s works varies from pure and conceptually clear installations to historically accurate stage designs characterized by a scrupulous approach to the tiniest detail, tone and nuance, generally revealing an unquenchable interest in the extraordinary things of everyday human life and a belief in humanism. She graduated the Department of Textile Art of the Rīga Art and Design Secondary School in 1993 and the Department of Stage Design at the Art Academy of Latvia in 1998.