In yesterday's post we looked at an artist who won an award at the 57th International Art Exhibition in Venice with a work revolving around textiles. Let's continue the thread (pun intended) with another artist who received a special mention at the Biennale, Petrit Halilaj.
Born in 1986 in Kosovo, Halilaj was 12 years old when his family fled the Kosovo war to seek refuge in Albania. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, later on working in Prishtina, Bozzolo and Berlin.
For this Biennale the artist and his mother created sculptures made using traditional Kosovar fabrics or materials like qilim, dyshek and jan carpets.
The sculptures, collectively reunited under the title "Do you realise there is a rainbow even if it's night!?" represent moths climbing the walls of the Arsenale, in the section dedicated to the "Pavilion of the Earth", a space centred on environmental, animal and planetary utopias, observations and dreams.
In a way there is a lot of humour in these pieces, reminiscent of a Kafkaesque metamorphosis and showing a poetical interest at the same time for traditional materials, something that points also at identity and nationality. Halilaj's giant fabric insects are indeed inspired by his childhood when he used to chase moths around light bulbs in the family home.
Moths have so far brought him luck, marking the beginning of his career: when he was invited to exhibit his works in Prishtina in 2009 he discovered the Lepidoptera collection from the former Museum of Natural History in a forgotten reserve and the discovery inspired him a series of works entitled "Cleopatra".
Halilaj developed his first moth costume last year with his mother, and he donned it to do a performance in which he walked around a room and around a lamp. This metamorphosis is a way for the artist to free his emotions and reach out to visitors, tackling at the same time his own vulnerability and identity.
There's melancholy in these pieces, but also a sense of childish glee and innocence, something highlighted by the motivation of the jury who gave Halilaj a special mention "for imaginative interventions in the architecture of the Arsenale and Central Pavilion, which create relationships between the history of Kosovo and childhood memories."
Note for book lovers: for this year's project "Unpacking My Library", inspired by Walter Benjamin's 1931 essay, Petrit Halilaj recommended as reading materials Qamil Batalli's "Abetare", Stephen H. Blackwell, Kurt Johnson (edited by)'s "Fine Lines: Vladimir Nabokov's Scientific Art" and Ruth Wolk-Rehfeldt's "Signs Fiction".
Comments