PETRIT HALILAJ

Abetare is the name of an Albanian alphabet textbook for Kosovar children. From the mid-1990s, Serbian oppression against the Albanian community intensified, making Abetare a symbolic book for the preservation of the cultural traditions of the Albanian ethnic group. Halilaj, who spent his childhood in Kosovo from 1992 to 1997, moved with his entire family to a refugee camp due to the outbreak of the Kosovo War in 1997. The artist gained attention for his participation in drawing programs designed to provide psychological support to children in refugee camps, and his work expresses the fears of war through the eyes of a child.

In 2012, when Halilaj revisited his hometown of Runik, the old school building in the village was about to be demolished. Inside the school, he discovered green desks and benches that had been used by generations of students since the 1970s, bearing secret fantasies and various language records left by the children. Halilaj collected these private records of dreams and fears seen in the children’s drawings and transformed them into drawings, sculptures, and installation works.

The works presented at The Page Gallery are part of Petrit Halilaj’s Abetare project, specifically the Albanian _Loja me Topa _meaning ‘playing ball.’ Inspired by the drawings left on the green desks of Shotë Galica Elementary School in Runik.

The 11-member soccer team includes figures ranging from actual players to a snowman and an animation character, embodying a humorous array of human emotions. Through scenes of these desk characters coming to life and playing ball in the gallery space, viewers can see a universal reflection on life, imagination, hope, fears, and dreams of an artist who spent his childhood in Kosovo.

Petrit Halilaj was born in Kosovo and graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. He made his international debut at the Berlin Biennale in 2010. In 2013, he was selected as the representative artist for Kosovo at the Venice Biennale, and in 2017, he won the Mario Merz Prize and the Special Mention Award at the 57th Venice Biennale. He has since held numerous solo exhibitions at Tate St. Ives, New Museum in New York, and others. This year, he was selected for the Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where _Petrit Halilaj, Abetare _will be on view from April to October. He is currently a professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris, France.