The artist talks about how he processed his experience as a refugee of the war in Kosovo in an exhibition that opened at "Tate St Ives"
When Petrit Halilaj received confirmation that he is part of the Belgrade Biennale (2020) he was surprised to find an empty place next to his name, where his birthplace should be. The artist is from Kosovo, a country recognized by half of the UN member states — but not Serbia, from which it declared independence in 2008 after a long conflict that culminated in war in the late 1990s, when Halilaj was in his early teens. So his family was placed in a refugee camp for more than a year.
This non-mention of Kosovo had shocked him, highlighting something he had thought – how an artist of the name living and working between Germany, Italy and Kosovo, he had surpassed it. Then researching literature on trauma, he discovers that it is common for 20 years to pass before a person can revisit their nightmares.
"You remind yourself that the main thing is that you survived," he said in a telephone conversation from Berlin.
Halilaj, now 35 years old, had withdrawn from the Biennale, but the effect of the open letter, which he published in connection with this case, was profound. Suddenly he found the courage to re-examine the drawings he had made as a 13-year-old during the war in the refugee camp in Kukës. He had left behind the drawings he had made with Giacomo Poli, an Italian psychologist who is now his close friend and who had visited the camp in 1999, encouraging the children to draw instead of talking about what they had seen.
"As a child, I was always more comfortable when I was drawing and not when I was talking," said Halilaj. "And when I was 13 years old I was becoming more and more introverted."
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The case with Belgrade consisted of an invitation to create an exhibition for "Tate St Ives". Like previous works, the exhibition was a reference to the artist's birthplace, Runic, exploring the fact that it is built on Neolithic ruins and exploring contemporary views of that history. But, at that time, the ideas were rejected, the pandemic made it impossible to travel and transport the artifacts that the exhibition required. An exhibition based on the drawings that Halilaj had made during his stay in the refugee camp had begun to take shape as an alternative.
"Petriti said, 'I'm not sure I'm ready, but if I could be, what I'd like to do would be a re-examination of the drawings,'" recalled the director of the Tate St Ives gallery. "After a while, this was something he increasingly felt he had to do."
The result is "Very volcanic over this green feather" - the title is an allusion to the emotional confusion hidden by the fabulous and bright landscape that the artist initially presents to us. The gallery-filling installation makes wonderful use of the space in the Tate St Ives gallery, which was added in 2017. And on the way there you have the chance to see the permanent collection, which cleverly tells the story of St Ives. and modernism in a more global context.
Inside the temporary exhibition, Halilaj invites us to explore a dense forest of fragments from his teenage drawings, enlarged, printed and suspended from the ceiling. At the entrance it gives the impression of an exotic and attractive landscape, with animals and birds – a pigeon, some parrots and a peacock. Follow the path to his fantasy, by any means, and turn back. Until you return to the same steps, the darkness of the war takes place - layer by layer the fragments emerge, the burnt house, the exploding bombs, Serbian soldiers with knives and guns and mass graves. They are not direct depictions of what he has seen and Halilaj has explained that the drawings are a combination of images from the media, his imagination and what he has actually seen.
In the center, somewhat to the side, Halilaj introduces himself, the image of the little boy does not come from the 38 drawings he made with Angelo, but one he had to show Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of United Nations, who had seen the young artist on television and asked to meet him when he visited the camp. The figure is the same on both sides, the only element of this installation that touches the ground and can be seen in both directions.
Halilaj and his family returned to Runik a few days after NATO peacekeeping forces arrived in Kosovo in June 1999. NATO bombing had forced Serbia to accept the peace agreement. Their house was destroyed, so they pitched a tent in the yard.
"There were mines, but we were not worried," he said. "We were happy that we were coming back, that they were seeing the country again without fear of death."
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The basis of his creativity, which he started when he went to Italy in 2004 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts "Brera", in Milan, has its roots in his biography, with Runic and the burning house he plays important role. For the sixth edition of the Berlin Biennale, in 2010, he recreated the skeleton of the house, with live chickens roaming around and the absence of walls emphasizing the impossibility of feeling safe.
Memories from his childhood and the experience of exodus and displacement resurfaced in 2013, when he represented Kosovo at the Venice Biennale. Subsequent installations took shape from graffiti drawn on school benches, which were about to be demolished, and a show he held in the ruins of the cultural center in Runik, later won him the "Mario Merz" award in 2017.
Birds, especially migratory birds – that travel great distances, that know when to rest and when to come back – fascinate the artist. They appear throughout his works, as a metaphor for either people moving, or the imagination. At times, he has said that he dresses up as a bird in order to avoid discussions about his works. "Birds have come in many forms and somehow I feel that they have always come to save me!"
In "St Ives", Halilaj pursues his desire to understand the world, but also his identity without the constricting jacket of nationality and patriotism.
"It's more my journey for what I do," he said. But he hopes the exhibition goes beyond his personal story.
The fragments in the exhibition are not only about loss, memories and the past: they are also about the choices we make as we build the future.
"We are always able to deny the parts of the narrative that we don't want to see," he said. Even now he is eager to participate in the reconstruction of Kosovo and was recently in the capital, Pristina, as part of a campaign to include the rights of the LGBT+ community in the new Constitution. His optimism is palpable. "I have no intention of giving up dreaming of a better future."
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Petrit Halilaj with his strange and poetic works on top of the Metropolitan Museum
The exhibition is open until January 16, 2022.
Taken from "Financial Times". Translated by Alberina Haxhijaj
