What Comes First, 2015

Though working independently, Petrit Halilaj and Alvaro Urbano very often serve as each other’s assistant in respective projects. In What Comes First (2015), they built a sophisticated henhouse (with atomic shelter) in the shape of a giant egg. Reflecting on the chicken and egg question (“which came first?”), the project combines specific aspects of each artist’s current research – Urbano’s habitable structures, on the one hand, with strong sociological investigation of the past, on the other; a continuation of the biographical and site-specific emphasis that is so present in Halilaj’s work.