She, fully turning around, became terrestrial
Curated by Rein Wolfs
Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn
5 March – 18 October 2015

She, fully turning around, became terrestrial, is an exhibition on the work of Petrit Halilaj, which was held at Bundeskunstehalle Bonn from 5 March – 18 October 2015.

Petrit Halilaj is an artist whose work is concerned with tracing history and biography. The artist quotes images of his personal recollections and draws on them in his work, translating them into the changed reality of the present day and, with it, into a new context and a new ‘guise’ – which often involves considerable magnification. Halilaj pursues this investigation of the past not just on his own behalf. In many of his installations he reviews and dramatises his own biography, which has been profoundly marked by the Kosovo War (1998– 1999), turning it into a universal example for the quest for identity, for keeping memory alive and for a closer examination of the idea of home – especially in the ever-recurring story of its loss.

The artist tends to use simple materials such as earth, straw, wood, concrete, stones or the rubble of his destroyed family home. But he also draws on archival material from the defunct Natural History Museum in Pristina, Kosovo (1956– 2001), which he has managed to locate and secure. Partly revised and recontextualised for the exhibition, it gives expression to the artist’s sustained engagement with memory and history and presents the museum as the repository of the (natural) history of a country, its population and its culture.

Petrit Halilaj has investigated the history of the collection of the Natural History Museum which had to make way for the displays of the Ethnographic Museum of Kosovo. Having tracked down the stuffed animals and other specimens – most of them ruined by years of wilful neglect and damp – in the stores of the Kosovo Museum in Pristina, he has single-mindedly applied himself to the task of ensuring their safety and conservation.