Petrit Halilaj
An Opera Out of Time
Location: Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
For his exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof, Halilaj developed an opera in collaboration with the Kosovo Philharmonic, founded after the end of the Kosovo War in 2000 and celebrating its 25th anniversary that year. The starting point was the legendary site of Syrigana, a three-thousand-year-old village near Halilaj’s hometown of Runik. Since 2016, it has been protected as an archaeological site of prehistory, late antiquity, and the Middle Ages. The elements of the opera were reconfigured within a site-specific installation.
Additionally, the exhibition featured five other large-scale installations drawn from different periods of the artist’s work, offering insight into his practice as a whole.
The Berlin-based artist Petrit Halilaj (born 1986) created complex worlds that provided space for freedom, longing, intimacy, and identity. His art was deeply connected to the history of his home country, Kosovo, and the cultural and political tensions in the region. His works had been exhibited internationally, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Venice Biennale, and Tate St Ives.