Abetare (Loja me Topa)
The Page Gallery, Seoul
22 August–21 September 2024
Notes and Ideas on Petrit Halilaj
The Artist as Archaeologist
In Kosovo, 1986: a child is born, named Petrit Halilaj.
In Kosovo, 1997: War breaks out.
Picasso was once famously quoted:
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael,
but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
Halilaj didn’t have to learn.
War taught him to see through a child’s eyes,
forever.
The Abetare project:
An alphabet of loss,
A lexicon of survival.
He returns to Runik, a prodigal artist, in 2012,
finds his Rosetta Stone in classroom debris.
Encounters the hieroglyphs of youth:
stick figures, daydreams, unfinished homework.
What is memory but a palimpsest, onion-skinned and delicate?
Halilaj scrapes away layers,
reveals the pentimento of a generation.
His soccer team: eleven players,
some human, some not.
A snowman guards the goal.
A cartoon defends midfield.
This is how children wage war:
with imagination as their weapon,
Imagination as their therapy.
In a world of walls, Halilaj builds bridges,
spans the chasm between past and present,
between self and other.
His art: a referendum on remembrance,
a manifesto of resilience.
In the end, what survives of us?
Chalk marks on a green desk,
a child’s drawing brought to life,
the indomitable spirit of play
in the face of unspeakable oppression.
Halilaj shows us:
In vulnerability, strength.
In fragments, wholeness.
In the ruins of a childhood in Runik,
the seeds of rebirth.
