{"id":210,"date":"2024-05-02T07:25:33","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T07:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/2024\/05\/02\/petrit-halilaj-abetare\/"},"modified":"2024-05-02T07:25:33","modified_gmt":"2024-05-02T07:25:33","slug":"petrit-halilaj-abetare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/2024\/05\/02\/petrit-halilaj-abetare\/","title":{"rendered":"Petrit Halilaj\u2019s Scratchy Doodles Grapple with Childhood Innocence on The Met Rooftop"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cAbetare\u201d (2024). All photos by Eileen Travell, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, shared with permission<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When visiting his hometown of Runik, Kosovo, back in 2010, Petrit Halilaj<\/a> realized that his elementary school was being demolished. He went to the site\u2014which had miraculously survived the Yugoslav wars that spurred his family to flee to an Albanian refugee camp in 1998\u2014and found a pile of desks, many with doodles and notes scratched into their surfaces.<\/p>\n

These etchings have now found their way to New York, where they\u2019re perched atop The Met<\/a>\u2019s rooftop garden for Abetare<\/em>, which translates to primer, as in the early education books used for learning basic literacy. Enlarged to proportions that would crush any singular tabletop, the rough drawings are presented as scratchy bronze sculptures depicting a flower, house, and spider \u00e1 la Louise Bourgeois.<\/p>\n

For the exhibition, Halilaj (previously<\/a>) paired his initial findings with other scribbles recovered from desks throughout Albania, North Macedonia, and Montenegro, Balkan countries impacted by Serbian hostilities following Yugoslavia\u2019s dissolution. \u201cFor me, returning to the region and visiting numerous schools was prompted by a desire to construct my own intimate map, in contrast to historical maps that reflect dominant narratives,\u201d he shares. \u201cWe do not exist in isolation. We are shaped by each other\u2019s identities, both positively and negatively.\u201d<\/p>\n

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On view through October 27, Abetare<\/em> features smaller works among the freestanding sculptures, including an arrow with Runik written in the center. Halilaj fastened that smaller piece to a concrete wall and pointed it toward the village as a way to tether the distant locations.<\/p>\n

While playful and evocative of adolescent impulse, the works are a reminder of how war and conflict warp innocence. The project is also particularly timely as the city contends with helping tens of thousands<\/a> of school-age migrants and the world witnesses mass atrocities in Palestine and Ukraine. Magnifying childhood transgressions, Abetare<\/em> highlights what the artist refers to as small \u201cacts of freedom\u201d that defy ideology and systemic oppression.<\/p>\n

Find more from Halilaj on\u00a0Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member<\/a> today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Petrit Halilaj\u2019s Scratchy Doodles Grapple with Childhood Innocence on The Met Rooftop<\/a> appeared first on Colossal<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAbetare\u201d (2024). All photos by Eileen Travell, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, shared with permission When visiting his hometown of Runik, Kosovo, back in 2010, Petrit Halilaj realized that his elementary school was being demolished. He went to the site\u2014which had miraculously survived the Yugoslav wars that spurred his family to flee to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,408,409,410,212],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sawberries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}