Petrit

Halilaj and Alvaro Urbano

Studio professors

Petrit Halilaj (1986, Kostërrc-Skenderaj, Kosovo) and Álvaro Urbano (1983, Madrid, Spain) have developed a joint practice since 2014, intermixing their individual artistic careers and their shared personal lives. The artists approach their duo work as a way of expressing the intricacies of how the private and the public collide and influence each other as fluid dimensions. 

Halilaj and Urbano are constantly creating a collaborative fiction through their duo work: collective memory blends with personal anecdotes, and utopian thinking is triggered by imagining how the idea of kinship expands beyond the human: Plants and animals takeover, becoming elements of the theatrics of intimacy. The artists have staged performances in which raccoons, foxes, seagulls, as well as imagined hybrid creatures are the main characters, surrounded by blown-up flowers and environments that activate spaces of resilience and resistance through the celebration of otherness.

Queerness and intimacy are key aspects of the artists’ work: they exercise them as means of world-making. With each project, they reconsider the normative aspect of society, offering alternatives that trigger spaces of negotiation in which collective memory and social expectations can be reconfigured. Their collaborative practice, developed alongside their individual work, generates unexpected paths through modulation, dialogue, and creative challenges. This dynamic expands to how both studios generate an ecosystem in which these visions are negotiated and crystallized, often involving a large cast of participants, including researchers, musicians and other artists.

Their work has been exhibited in the 24th edition of the Biennale of Sydney (2024);  Nobel Peace Center, Oslo (2023); Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin (2023); Ocean Space, Venice (2023); Opéra Comique, Paris (2021); Arken Museum, Copenhagen (2021); Autostrada Biennale, Pristina (2021); 17th Rome Quadriennale, Rome (2020); Palacio de Cristal, Reina Sofia, Madrid (2020); Brücke-Museum, Berlin (2019); MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Mackey Apartments, Los Angeles (2017); PAC-Pavilion of Contemporary Art, Milan (2015); SALTS, Basel (2015); Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2015); Villa Romana, Florence (2014). Urbano and Halilaj’s work is also part of the collections Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary – TBA21, Madrid, and Colección Jumex, Mexico City. Halilaj and Urbano jointly attended artist residencies at MAK, Los Angeles (2016-2017) and Villa Romana, Florence (2014).

Photos : Agustín Farias