Petrit Halilaj (b. 1986) is a Kosovar artist whose work transforms personal and national trauma into poignant, expansive acts of imagination. Born in the shadow of the Kosovo War, Halilaj mines memory, displacement, and identity, not as fixed wounds but as living materials for reinvention. His multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, drawing, installation, and performance, often weaving together childhood, nature, and history with disarming tenderness and wit.
Halilaj's installations are immersive and deeply autobiographical, yet universally resonant. Whether reconstructing his family’s war-damaged home from salvaged materials, or filling museum spaces with oversized moths, birds, and flowers made from fabric and steel, he reclaims space for wonder within the ruins of conflict. His work resists victimhood, instead offering a narrative of resilience rooted in love, community, and metamorphosis.
Educated in Italy and now working between Berlin, Pristina and Runik, Halilaj often collaborates with his partner, artist Álvaro Urbano, and infuses his practice with themes of queerness and kinship. His openness — political, emotional, and aesthetic — has earned him a growing international profile, including representing Kosovo at the 2013 Venice Biennale and major exhibitions at the New Museum, Tate St Ives, and Palais de Tokyo.
At once poetic and political, Halilaj’s work insists that intimacy and imagination are radical forces. He invites viewers into a world where the personal becomes monumental and the fragile holds transformative power. Petrit Halilaj doesn’t just make art about the past; he builds portals to futures shaped by care, creativity, and collective memory. In his hands, survival becomes sculpture, and home becomes wherever beauty dares to take root.
Laiton, plume / Brass, feather
192.5 x 47 x 108 cm