curated by Leonardo Bigazzi
Fondazione Merz, 29 October 2018 – 3 February 2019

Fondazione Merz presents Shkrepëtima, the new personal exhibition of Petrit Halilaj (Kostërrc, Skenderaj-Kosovo 1986),  the winner of the art section of the second edition of the Mario Merz Prize, the biennial international award for art and music promoted by the Fondazione Merz.

The exhibition constitutes the culminating and final point of a more complex exhibition project, curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, taking the form of three different stages in three locations significant for the life and career of the artist.

The first stage corresponds to the realisation of a performance that took place on 7 July 2018 at the ruins of the Cultural Centre of Runik (Kosovo), the city where the artist grew up and where he came in touch with the entire local community. Subsequently, from 20 July to 19 August 2018, an exhibition was presented at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Berne (Switzerland), underlining the profound shared aims between Switzerland and Italy as regards the mission of the Mario Merz Prize. Finally, the project arrives in Turin in the form of an important and unprecedented final exhibition the heart of which will be a site-specific intervention.

The work of Petrit Halilaj questions how the collective memory of a community is formed and aims to act as a spark. In the Albanian language the term Shkrepëtima means “flash” and, by extension, indicates a sudden and intense thought that works as an activator of consciences, but also recalls the historical legacy of the homonymous multiethnic cultural magazine published in Runik between the 1970s and ’80s.

Shkrepëtima continues the investigation into the historical roots of the town of Runik, intervening on the ground in order to change the processes of constitution of collective history and bring the community closer to its origins.

The starting point of this process in the traces of lost history is Runik, the town in which the artist grew up and where, between 1968 and 1983, an important Neolithic settlement was brought to light and, in particular, an ocarina: one of the oldest musical instruments ever found in the Balkans. Today, this important relic of the historical and cultural heritage of the area together with the complex of material sources found, is not accessible to the inhabitants as it is conserved in Belgrade.

The performance, produced by Hajde! Foundation and Fondazione Merz, which involves thirty performers, musicians and all the inhabitants of the village, will, through their common action reactivate the link between the population and its culture in the face of what remains of a symbolic place for the town’s memory. Until the outbreak of the terrible clash that led Kosovo to independence, the Cultural Centre included a large bookstore, a theatre and a cooperative and this aggregative function will find echo in the action orchestrated by Petrit Halilaj with his fellow citizens, even though the fate of the centre is extremely uncertain today.

The two exhibitions at the Zentrum Paul Klee and at the Fondazione Merz will present 40 new drawings executed by the artist after examining the documentary remains found at the Cultural Centre in Runik. The series will function as a conceptual storyboard for the performance and at the same time as a visual plot of the village’s cultural history.

The exhibition at the Zentrum Paul Klee is rounded off by the two-channel video installation The city roofs were so near that even a sleepwalking cat could pass over Runik without ever touching the ground (already presented as part of RU at the New Musuem in 2017), which records the anecdotal voices of a population whose history exists only in stories handed down orally.

The exhibition at the Fondazione Merz represents the real completion of the entire Shkrepëtima project: the final and total restitution of this descent down the roots of identity of a culture.

Through a new site-specific intervention that will include videos, sounds, sculptures, drawings and installations made during the performance in Runik, it will allow the public to penetrate the intricate dialogic system woven by the artist, in an attempt to reconstruct a link between the territory and its inhabitants.

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of a catalogue published by hopefulmonster containing the documentation of the entire project.

curated by Leonardo Bigazzi

Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern,  20 July – 19 August 2018 

Petrit Halilaj’s exhibition at the Zentrum Paul Klee forms part of a series of interrelated projects and exhibitions in Runik (Kosovo), Bern and Turin, commissioned by the Fondazione Merz. In Albanian, Shkrepëtima means «spark», «lightning», or a sudden, intense feeling. Through video, drawing and sculpture, Halilaj explores national identity, questions geographic boundaries and asks how collective history is shaped. Petrit Halilaj is the winner of the 2^nd edition of the Mario Merz Prize, an international award for outstanding artists established by the Merz Foundation in Turin.

The focal point of the exhibition at the Zentrum Paul Klee is the fact that Runik, where Halilaj resided with his family before fleeing to Albania in the wake of the Kosovo war, is situated at the location of one of the most significant Neolithic settlements in Southeast Europe. After the Kosovo war, many buildings were erected directly on top of the archaeological site, and for this reason, contemporary Runik bears no visible trace of its ancient history. However, villagers still discover pieces of pottery, ceremonial items or human figurines in the fields surrounding the village. The most significant finds however are stored at a museum in Belgrade, Serbia, where they are inaccessible to the Kosovar public. Halilaj’s recent work poses the question what cultural and social role these historical artefacts play – or what role they could potentially play in the future.

In the absence of an «official» historical record, knowledge about the region’s ancient past remains scarce among the locals of Runik. Instead, the artefacts found in the village have become objects of the popular imagination, and speculation about their origin is rife. By exploring the history of these objects and their everyday uses, Halilaj’s video installation The City Roofs Were So Near That Even A Sleepwalking Cat Could Pass Over Runik Without Ever Touching The Ground (2017) offers a portrait of contemporary Runik, and, by extension, of Kosovo as a young nation yet uncertain about its history and identity.

The sculptures from the series RU (2017) are based on official archaeological records and exhibition catalogues of artefacts discovered in Runik between 1968 and 1982. Most of these finds were loaned to the Belgrade Museum but never returned to Kosovo due to the war. Halilaj recreated this lost collection of 505 objects from clay and transformed them into bird-like sculptures – by adding feet, legs, or feathers from brass wire. In the artist’s imagination, the artefacts come to life anew as migratory birds that can travel, cross borders, populate new territories, and free themselves from the weight of recent history. The central architectural element of the exhibition at the Zentrum Paul Klee – a wooden structure reminiscent of a bird’s nest, built on site using a range of natural materials – accommodates the sculptures.

In parallel to the exhibition, Halilaj has staged a major cultural event in the former cultural centre of Runik, now a ruin. The event took place on July 7, 2018, and was staged with the participation of numerous partners from the village and the region. Halilaj conceived the performative event as a spark – a Shkrepëtima – that he hopes will initiate the social and cultural development of the village. The event represents Halilaj’s first major intervention in public space and testifies to his ambition to work with the community to leave a lasting impact. As part of the exhibition at the Zentrum Paul Klee, Halilaj is presenting a series of 40 drawings and conceptual studies that he has created on old documents found at the site of the House of Culture. The drawings function as a conceptual storyboard of the performance and as a visual narrative of the cultural history of the village.

curated by Beatrice Merz

Fondazione Merz, 8 March  – 11 June 2017

The 5 finalists in the Art Section of Mario Merz Prize, second edition are  Francesco Arena, Petrit Halilaj, Gili Lavy, Shahryar Nashat and Suha Traboulsi.

The exhibition unfolds on the ground floor of the Fondazione and features one or two of the most significant works, among videos, installations, and sculptures, by each of the shortlisted artists.

The finalists in the Art Section, were selected among hundreds of nominees by jurors of the pre-selection panel Nicholas Cullinan (Director National Portrait Gallery, London), Claudia Gioia (indipendent curator) and Marisa Merz.
Members of the Final Jury for the Art Section are: Manuel Borja-Villel (director Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid), Massimiliano Gioni (Head Curator New Museum, New York – Art Director Fondazione Trussardi, Milan), Lawrence Weiner (artist), and Beatrice Merz. The public has the possibility to participate in the voting process by logging onto the website, www.mariomerzprize.org or by filling out the voting card provided.