The Nasher Sculpture Center announces Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj as the 2027 Nasher Prize Laureate, becoming the ninth and youngest artist to receive the award.
“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,” says Halilaj. “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.”
In accordance with the artist’s wishes, the $100,000 prize will be donated to Hajde! Foundation, the Kosovo-based nonprofit Halilaj and his sister, curator Hana Halilaj, founded in 2014 to create spaces and opportunities for Kosovar artists. One of its most ambitious projects is the revitalization of the House of Culture in Runik, Kosovo, a former community arts center in the town where Halilaj spent much of his childhood, which was profoundly affected by war.
Born in 1986 in Kostërrc, a small village outside the town of Runik, Petrit Halilaj is known for creating fantastical and immersive spaces that fuse childhood wonder with the personal and political history of his homeland. Using a variety of artistic languages—sculpture, drawing, text, and performance—Halilaj transforms the signs and symbols of innocence into three-dimensional dreamscapes and multi-layered installations that incorporate narrative and mythic performances and harness symbolism and fantasy as a force for hope and healing.
“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,” says Director Carlos Basualdo. “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.”
Main Image: Petrit Halilaj, 2025. Photo by Bastien Thiery, courtesy of the artist