Abetare (Runik)

Halilaj’s artistic projects are deeply rooted in his personal history, as well as collective memories of his homeland Kosovo. Motifs and themes pertaining to Kosovo’s natural landscape and cultural patrimony populate many of his works. Abetare (Runik) was part of The Met’s similarly titled 2024 Roof Garden Commission: Abetare, the artist’s first public outdoor installation. The title Abetare, or "primer" in Albanian and Serbian refers to the book that the artist and his peers used to learn the alphabet at school, each letter linked to a lesson in pictures and text. Runik is the name of the artist’s hometown in Kosovo.

Kosovo experienced the last of a series of wars in the Balkan region in the 1990s, during which many children were denied access to education on ideological grounds. Initially inspired by children’s doodles, drawings, and scribbles found on desks at his former school, Halilaj expanded his research to other schools in Albania and countries from the former Yugoslavia, which are now undergoing significant cultural and sociopolitical change. The furtive drawings were enlarged into three-dimensional metal sculptures. Together, they brought to public scrutiny the imaginative power of generations of students whose lives were marked by traumatic conflicts and territorial divisions.

In Abetare, culturally specific references to different political ideologies, religions, and local heroes coexisted with more universal symbols and playful nods to pop culture, art history, and sports. Spread around The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, these "drawings in space" merged with the surrounding architecture and landscape to create a multivocal scenography with an open-ended narrative.