Petrit Halilaj Picked to Do Met’s Prestigious Rooftop Sculpture Commission
Petrit Halilaj
PHOTO FRANCESC PASCUAL TORRENS
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has tapped（指名した） three artists for its 2024 facade（正面）, rooftop, and Great Hall commissions（委任）, which are among the most prestigious（名誉ある）—and visible（目に見える）—stages for art in New York.
On Wednesday, the Met announced that Kosovo-born（コソボ生まれの） artist Petrit Halilaj will transform the Rooftop Garden with a sculptural installation（取付） based on the war that ravaged（荒廃させた） the Balkans during his youth in the 1990s; the work will debut in April.
South Korean sculptor Lee Bul will unveil（ベールをぬぐ） four sculptures for the museum’s Fifth Avenue facade niches（くぼみ） in September, and Taiwanese artist Tong Yang-Tze will create two large-scale calligraphy works（書道作品）incorporating （取り入れた）classical Chinese literature for the Great Hall, on view beginning in November.
The Met’s rooftop installation features sculptures inspired by children’s desktop doodles
By Aaron Ginsburg
April 30, 2024
メトロポリタン美術館の屋上の展示は、子供たちの机の上の落書きにひらめきを得た作品である
Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj this week unveiled （発表した）his work “Abetare,” an exhibition of three-dimensional metal sculptures depicting（描いている） drawings（線描きの絵） he found on classroom desks at his former school in Kosovo, as well as in Albania and countries from the former Yugoslavia. While（一方で） appearing whimsical（気まぐれな）, the sculptures provide a look at the imagination of children whose lives were upended（ひっくり返された） by war.
Halilaj was encouraged（励まされた） by a psychologist at the camp to draw pictures of his experiences and the trauma he faced during the war, which eventually put his career as an artist in motion.
For the Met’s commission, Halilaj transformed（変身させた） scribbles（なぐり書き） from children’s desks into three-dimensional sculptures, with each keeping a trace of the original doodle（いたずら書き）. The sculptures illustrate the collective（皆が共有していた） memory and imaginations of generations of students impacted by violent conflicts and division.
During the 1990s, the last of a series of wars in the Balkans resulted in（結果として～ということになる）many children being denied educationbased on ideological grounds. The installation’s title, “Abetare,” is borrowed from a book the artist and his classmates used to learn the alphabet in school.
“The casual scribbles of schoolchildren done on their desks in moments of boredom（退屈） or distraction（よそ見） reveal the fantasies and dreams of their minds,” Halilaj said. “I started to explore this in my practice in 2015, and it was important for me then to extend the dreams of my school in Kosovo to Europe, a part of the world from which my country was still isolated（孤立した）.”
The Abetare is a children's textbook written in the Albanian language. It was created to help teach the basic language to children and young adults throughout Albania and the surrounding region where Albanians live. Abetare has played a significant role in the history of Albanian education and laid the groundwork for literary Albanian which helped raise the national consciousness for future generations. By learning to read and write, young Albanians were introduced to the history and culture of their homeland.
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