Petrit Halilaj Wins $100,000 Nasher Prize for Sculpture
79Oct. 4, 2025
Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj has won the 2027 iteration of theNasher Prize. Established in 2015, the award, considered to be the world’s most prestigious sculpture honor, is presented biennially by the Nasher Sculpture Center to a living artist whose work pushes the boundaries of the form. Halilaj—who at thirty-nine is the youngest artist ever to win the laurel—will receive $100,000 from the Dallas institution. A solo exhibition of his work, accompanied by a monograph, will open at the Nasher, with dates yet to be announced.
Halilaj announced that he is donating the entire $100,000 purse to the Kosovo-based nonprofit Hajde! Foundation. The organization, which he founded with his sister in 2014, is devoted to supporting the work of Kosovar artists and is currently working to rebuild Runik, Kosovo’s House of Culture, a onetime community center that was devastated in the war nearly three decades ago. “I am obsessed with reopening it, and this award will add a piece of guarantee,” he told theNew York Times.
“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 Kostërrc, Kosovo in 1986, Halilaj divides his time among Germany, Italy, and Kosovo. Forced to flee to an Albanian refugee camp with his family at the age of twelve after Serbian troops set fire to his village during the Kosovo War, Halilaj began making art at the suggestion of a psychologist at the camp as a way of reckoning with the trauma. He is widely recognized for his fantastical and dreamlike sculptures and installations exploring Kosovo’s personal and political histories and current conditions.
“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,” said Nasher director Carlos Basualdo in a statement. “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.”