The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas has awarded its 2027 Nasher Prize to Petrit Halilaj, a closely watched artist who is the youngest ever to win the prize since its establishment in 2015.
The award, which has been given biannually since 2023, comes with $100,000 and an exhibition and programming at the Nasher. Further details for Halilaj’s showing at the Nasher in 2027 will be announced at a later date.
In an unusual move, Halilaj has decided to donate the $100,000 purse to the Hajde! Foundation, a Kosovo-based nonprofit he cofounded with his sister in 2014 that focuses on supporting the work of Kosovar artists.
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“I am deeply humbled by the recognition and generous gift of the Nasher Prize, which I am proud to dedicate in its entirety to Hajde! Foundation,” Halilaj said in a statement. “While my practice is continually shaped by my personal history rooted in Kosovo, the mission of Hajde! is to create possibilities for art to resonate both locally and beyond. This gift will help ensure that spaces for imagining, creating, and dreaming beyond the limits of one’s own place can flourish.”
Born in 1986 in Kostërrc, Kosovo, and now based between Kosovo, Germany, and Italy, Halilaj is known for his sculptures and installations that deal with the history and current sociopolitical realities of Kosovo, often filtered through a sense of childlike whimsy. The outbreak of the Kosovo War during his youth in the late ’90s, which includes the destruction of his village by Serbian forces and his subsequent relocation to a refugee camp in Albania, are ever-present undercurrents in the work.
Halilaj is among today’s most high-profile sculptors, having been included in major exhibitions like the 2024 Sydney Biennale, the 2019 Lyon Biennale, the 2010 Berlin Biennale, and the 2017 Venice Biennale, for which he received a special mention from the exhibition’s Golden Lion jury. He also represented Kosovo at the 2013 Venice Biennale.
Last year, he participated in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rooftop commission, and his work is currently the subject of a solo show at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. The Museo Tamayo in Mexico City organized the most comprehensive survey of his work in 2023, and he has also had solos at Tate St. Ives in 2021, the Museo Reina Sofia in 2020, the Hammer Museum in 2018, and the New Museum in 2017.
Halilaj was selected by an eight-person jury consisting of artist Nairy Baghramian, who won the Nasher Prize in 2022; Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, director emeritus of the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Italy; Lynne Cooke, senior curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Briony Fer, an art historian at the University College London; independent curator Hou Hanru; Yuko Hasegawa, a professor in curatorial theory and practice at Kyoto University; Pablo León de la Barra, curator at large for Latin America at the Guggenheim Museum; and Nicholas Serota, chair of the Arts Council England.
In a statement, Carlos Basualdo, who became the Nasher’s director this past May, said, “In his installations and performances, where drawings acquire a sculptural presence and the space of the imagination is literally unleashed, Petrit Halilaj reveals how experiences of pain are inextricably bound to moments of joy, tenderness, and connection. His work is particularly resonant today both for its deep investment in the humanity of lived experience, and for the way it creates spaces of encounter that transcend artistic, cultural, and geographic boundaries. By choosing Halilaj, the Nasher Prize jury recognizes his work as both formally innovative and deeply relevant for the current moment.”