Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj (born 1986, Kostërc,Kosova ) has been commissioned to create a site-specific installation for the Museum’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. For the artist’s first major project in the United States, Halilaj has transformed The Met Roof with a sprawling sculptural installation.
Halilaj’s work is deeply connected to the recent history of his native country, Kosovo, and the consequences of cultural and political tensions in the region. After a formative period in Italy, where he studied art at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, he moved to Berlin in 2008, where he still lives and works. His projects encompass a variety of media, including sculpture, drawing, poetry, and performance.
The exhibition is supported by Blomberg Philanthropies
Additional support is provided by the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund, Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky, and the Edward John & Patricia Rosenwald Foundation.
The catalogue is made possible by the Mary and Louis S. Myers Foundation Endowment Fund.
For the artist’s first major project in the United States, Petrit Halilaj has transformed The Met Roof with a sprawling sculptural installation.
Amid war in Kosova, Halilaj was displaced to a refugee camp in Albania as a teenager. There, he was encouraged to draw by a group of Italian psychologists who visited the site.
For Halilaj, art became both a creative outlet and a means of self-preservation: drawing mountainous landscapes and soldiers holding guns was a way to process his tumultuous situation.
He’s consistently returned to those sketches as an adult, at times enlarging them to form new artworks.
Halilaj’s work is deeply connected to the recent history of his native country, Kosova, and the consequences of cultural and political tensions in the region.
After a formative period in Italy, where he studied art at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, he moved to Berlin in 2008, where he still lives and works. His projects encompass a variety of media, including sculpture, drawing, poetry, and performance.
