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Interview
Artist Talks
Petrit Halilaj
Visual Artist
Short Profile
Name: Petrit Halilaj
Prishtina, Kosova
Visual artist, activist
“Through art, I’ve always been saving my life,” “It was always a way out and a window to imagination and dreaming and telling stories.”
INTERVIEW
Gili Hoxhaj
What first inspired you to become an artist?
I grew up in a village near Runik. When I was a child, war shattered my home — in 1998–1999 my family’s house was destroyed, and we escaped to a refugee camp in Albania. At about age 13, in the camp, Italian psychologists gave me markers. Drawing became a way to process trauma, memory, and hope. That act of drawing memories of loss, dreams and nightmares became a seed for everything that followed.
Your art often merges personal history with large-scale installations. How do you translate intimate memories into monumental artworks?
I treat memory — personal or collective — as a material. A sketch I made as a child in a refugee camp can become a vast sculptural installation. A house destroyed by war can be reconstructed in a gallery to echo its loss and evoke absence. I use sculpture, drawing, performance, and often materials referencing Kosovo, home, nature — turning fragility into spaces of imagination and dialogue.
Many of your works deal with displacement, home, identity. Do you see your art as a form of healing or resistance?
Both. It’s healing — personal, collective. It’s also resistance: a refusal to let trauma erase memory, identity, dignity. My work says: we were here, we suffered, we remember — but also we hope, we build, we imagine futures rooted in love, connection, community.
Your installations have appeared worldwide — at galleries and museums from New York to Berlin to Madrid. Does that global platform change the meaning of your work, coming from Kosovo?
When your story travels it gains new layers — memory becomes universal. The trauma, identity and longing that shaped me in Kosovo can resonate with anyone who knows displacement, loss, or longing. Exhibiting globally doesn’t dilute the roots — it amplifies their meaning, connects stories across borders.
