Petrit Halilaj's Memory-Laden Installation at Lafayette Anticipation

During the FIAC art fair in October 2013, the Fondation d'entreprise Galeries Lafayette launched its prefiguration program Lafayette Anticipation in a 19th-century industrial building in Paris, prior to its renovation by OMA and official opening in spring 2016. Director François Quintin invited Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj (b. 1986) to take over the ground floor. Halilaj, who had recently represented Kosovo for the first time at the Venice Biennale, presented "14th July ?", a project centered on memory and rebirth. The work stems from Halilaj's discovery of a walled-off section of the Natural History Museum of Pristina after Kosovo's 2008 independence, which was to make way for a local folklore museum. He dismantled the wall and documented the forgotten remains—specimens in jars, display cases, and taxidermied animals—on film shown on one and then three screens. The installation also featured metal rods along walls, mirrors, a mysterious portico, and animals modeled from a black peat-like composite, seemingly colonizing the space: a guinea fowl, a snake, a rabbit emerging from a pipe, a duck on a copper brick, and a school of fish hanging from golden bars near the ceiling. Delicate collage drawings adorned the animals with fantastic plumage and gold. The exhibition resonated with the site's own history of transformation. Text by Anaël Pigeat.