Petrit Halilaj

Early life Born in SFR Yugoslavia, now Kosovo, Halilaj left the country at the age of 13 with his family during the Yugoslav Wars of 1991–2001. At a refugee camp in Albania, a team of Italian psychologists, hoping to help the children process the trauma of the war, gave Halilaj felt-tip markers, with which he began to make drawings about his experiences.

Career During the 6th Berlin Biennale in 2010, Halilaj exhibited a sculptural reconstruction of a house built by his parents, to replace the family home that was levelled by bombing during the 1998–1999 Kosovo war.

Halilaj represented the Republic of Kosovo at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.

Halilaj had several solo exhibitions, including one at the New Museum in New York in 2017–2018

In 2020 Halilaj dropped out of the 58th , claiming that the , which organises it, would not recognize his Kosovar nationality.

In July 2021, Halilaj and Urbano collaborated on an installation of "huge fabric flowers" at the Kosovo National Library to celebrate the 5th annual Kosovo Pride Week. According to the New York Times:

quote|text=[The flowers] included a replica of a lily that had been part of [Urbano and Halilaj's] engagement bouquet. Kosovo is still a macho society, Halilaj said, yet no one had "thrown tomatoes" or protested against the artists' celebration of gay love. "When this happened, under the flowers, I felt home for the first time in my life." 2020 – To a raven and hurricanes that from unknown places bring back smells of humans in love, Palacio de Cristal, Madrid 2023 – Runik, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico 2024 – The Roof Garden Commission: Abetare, at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA 2024 – Ensamble lunar para mares al alza, at MACBA, Barcelona, Spain (with Álvaro Urbano) 2025 - An Opera of Our Time, at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany 2026 – Who does the earth belong to while painting the wind?!, ChertLüdde, Berlin, Germany

Collections Centre Pompidou, Paris, France , Turin, Italy Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland Tate Modern, London, UK

Awards Halilaj received the Mario Merz Prize Halilaj received the Kunstpreis Berlin awarded by the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, in 2023. On 2 October 2025, Halilaj was named the 2027 Nasher Prize Laureate by the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas. The Prize comes with a "$100,000 and the opportunity to devise public programming with the Nasher Sculpture Center."