Petrit Halilaj

Petrit Halilaj was born in 1986 in Kostërrc, Kosovo, and lives and works between Kosovo, Germany, and Italy. His artistic practice is deeply rooted in his personal experience and in the recent history of Kosovo, addressing the political, social, and cultural transformations that have shaped the region. Through sculpture, installation, drawing, and large-scale spatial interventions, Halilaj explores the relationship between personal and collective memory, examining how individual experiences are shaped by broader histories of conflict, displacement, belonging, and political change. A recurring concern in Halilaj’s work is the relationship between private memories and public narratives. He often draws on elements from his childhood, family history, and the places in which he has lived, transforming personal experiences into forms that can be reconsidered within the exhibition space. Objects, architectural fragments, images, and references to local traditions become vehicles for reflecting on identity and belonging, while also questioning how histories are preserved, represented, and transmitted. In this context, his work frequently moves between the intimate and the monumental, bringing personal stories into dialogue with wider social and political histories. Halilaj also engages critically with the institutions and structures through which culture and history are presented. Exhibition-making itself becomes an important part of his practice, allowing him to reconsider the relationship between museum spaces, collective memory, and systems of representation. Rather than treating the museum as a neutral setting, he uses its architecture and conventions as material, creating situations in which established narratives can be questioned and alternative perspectives can emerge. His installations often occupy and transform the exhibition environment, encouraging viewers to reconsider the boundaries between artwork, architecture, memory, and lived experience. Questions of freedom and identity are closely connected to these investigations. Halilaj’s work reflects on the ways in which political circumstances can affect private life and shape individual and collective identities, while also considering the possibility of reclaiming or reimagining histories that have been marginalised or overlooked. His approach combines autobiographical references with symbolic and poetic forms, allowing memories and experiences to be translated into physical environments that remain open to multiple interpretations. Across his practice, Halilaj brings together the personal and the political, the intimate and the collective, using art as a space in which histories can be revisited and reconfigured. His work proposes an understanding of memory not as a fixed record of the past, but as something continually reconstructed through objects, places, relationships, and acts of remembrance. In doing so, he creates environments that reflect on the persistence of personal histories within broader political narratives and on the ways art and exhibition-making can contribute to new understandings of identity, freedom, and belonging.