Petrit Halilaj
PETRIT HALILAJ (b. 1986 in Kostërrc, Kosovo) understands exhibitions as a way to alter the course of personal and collective histories, creating complex worlds that claim space for freedom, desire, intimacy, and identity. His work is deeply connected to the recent history of his native country Kosovo and the consequences of cultural and political tensions in the region, which he often takes as a starting point for igniting countercurrent poetics for the future. Rooted in his biography, the projects encompass a variety of media, including sculpture, drawing, painting, text, and performance. Often incorporating materials from Kosovo and manifesting as ambitious spatial installations, his work transposes personal relationships, places, and people into sculptural forms. Halilaj’s practice can be seen as a playful and, at times, irreverent attempt to resist oppressive politics and social norms towards an untamed celebration of all forms of connectedness and freedom. Kamel Mennour and Petrit Halilaj have been working together since 2014.
In April 2024 Halilaj will present a site-specific installation for the Met Rooftop Garden Commission in New York. In November 2023, the exhibition Petrit Halilaj: Runik opened at Tamayo Museum, Mexico, and since December 2023 his work is on view at the NGV Triennial in Melbourne, Australia. In 2022 he took part in Manifesta 14 in Pristina, Kosovo with a large-scale public artwork that is now on permanent display in the city. In 2021, Tate St Ives presented his solo exhibition Very volcanic over this green feather. Halilaj represented Kosovo at its first national pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.
Halilaj held solo exhibitions at the Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva, Fries Museum, Leeuwarden; Tate St Ives, UK; Palacio de Cristal, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; New Museum, New York; Fondazione Merz, Turin; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Paul Klee Zentrum, Bern; Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn; Fondation d’Entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris; the National Gallery of Kosovo, Pristina; Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen; Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon; and WIELS, Brussels, among others. His work was shown in group exhibitions at the 15th Lyon Biennale; the Louisiana Museum in Denmark; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles; Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection, Venice; NEON, Mykonos, Greece; and the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, among others.
He received the Kunstpreis Berlin from the Akademie der Künste in 2023 and was honored with the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF) in 2018. In 2017, he earned both the Mario Merz Prize and a special mention from the jury at the 57th Venice Biennale. Prior to these, he completed the MAK-Schindler Scholarship Program at the Mackey Apartments in Los Angeles in 2016, and participated in residencies at Villa Romana (Florence, 2014) and Fürstenberg Contemporary (Heiligenberg, 2012).
Halilaj studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Art in Milan. He is currently a professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris, France, together with his partner and frequent artistic collaborator, Álvaro Urbano. He is a member of the Akademie der Künste der Welt.
He lives and works between Germany, Kosovo and Italy.