BARCELONA.- The MACBA presents the work of Petrit Halilaj & Įlvaro Urbano, Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas. Inspired by Ay mi pescadito, a popular Spanish song about young fish studying forms of survival and belonging, this immersive work addresses concepts of cohesion and disharmony among species. The installation is on view as part of a solo presentation of the artists’ work, following its debut at TBA21 Ocean Space in Venice in 2023, and includes new sculptures.
Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas (2023) by Berlin-based artists Petrit Halilaj (Kostėrrc, Kosovo, 1986) and Įlvaro Urbano (Madrid, Spain, 1983) creates an evolving ecosystem comprising over 40 large and small scale sculptures depicting whimsical, hybrid aquatic, terrestrial, and aerial mythical creatures that do not exist in the real world. The works, which will include new sculptures for this presentation, range in scale and offer creative interpretations of future states of evolution, including survival both underwater and in the sky. Above the creatures, a large egg-shaped moon sculpture is suspended from the ceiling and floats above the space, symbolizing the cyclical nature of our world and encouraging visitors to reimagine future forms of life.
Set within MACBA’s expansive three-floor atrium, the sculptures’ metallic skins reflect lights and shadows onto the museum’s walls, ceilings, and floors, modifying the perception of the work over the day. Each sculpture doubles as a musical instrument, producing sounds from music boxes and other DIY techniques. When played together, the music boxes and other instruments attempt a “melody” inspired by Ay mi pescadito combined with underwater noises. These sounds do not easily harmonise, mirroring the complexity of creating perfect synchrony among species in the material world. A cast of local and international musicians, dancers and performers has activated the installation with a big performance.
The artists Petrit Halilaj and Įlvaro Urbano work together on collaborative fiction projects in which collective memory melds with personal anecdotes and notions of kinship extends beyond the human. Their joint works activate spaces of resilience through the deployment of scenographies of intimacy. A peculiarity that is also visible when they work separately.
Although the artists share a life together in Berlin, they typically maintain separate artistic practices. The presentation in Venice marked the first time the artists were invited as a duo to develop a site-specific work. Both of their practices imbue personal, playful elements that work to ask questions regarding societal norms.
Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas (2023) is a co-commission between TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet Contemporary, and highlights both programmes’ commitment to supporting artists internationally in new research and artistic production. The installation at MACBA has been curated by Elvira Dyangani Ose, MACBA’s director, in collaboration with exhibitions coordinator and associate curator of these project, Blanca del Rio.
Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas
Project by Petrit Halilaj and Įlvaro Urbano
From 11 October 2024 to 12 January 2025
‘An egg-shaped moon, aquatic creatures becoming terrestrial and aerial, an orchestra playing a symphony that emerges from the waters and syncs with the moon cycles.’ These are only some of the stories that allow us to navigate and wander through the installation Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas by the artists Petrit Halilaj (Kostėrrc, Kosovo, 1986) and Įlvaro Urbano (Madrid, Spain, 1983). The work unfolds a sculptural-musical movement that, in the words of the artists, ‘blurs our binary sense of the world’.
Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas proposes an ecosystem that dilutes the figure of the human and centres other creatures. Metallic beings unfurl and open up a space of improbable coexistence, and for negotiation of strange materialities and temporalities. Some of these sculptures transform, through human interaction, into musical instruments. Together, they generate a sonic, subaquatic echo of Ay, mi pescadito, a children’s song in which a crying little fish is comforted with the illusion of ‘going to fish school where you can learn from a book, how not to get caught on the fisherman's hook”
The artist practice of Halilaj and Urbano promotes collective exercises that explore the human and natural worlds and invite us to journey between them. Creating ecosystems in which the interrelations between divergent beings complicate notions of kinship and parenthood, eroding distinctions between natural and artificial bonds. Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas expands and resituates the original premise of the project in 2023; the work is presented here with the inclusion of new sculptures and the participation of local and international musicians and actors. Activating in their reinterpretation of the original sound piece during the opening and closing of the installation, the artists dissonant melodies.
Petrit Halilaj (1986, Kostėrrc-Skenderaj, Kosovo) and Įlvaro Urbano (1983, Madrid, Spain) have developed a joint practice since 2014, intermixing their individual artistic careers and their shared personal lives. The artists approach their duo work as a way of expressing the intricacies of how the private and the public collide and influence each other as fluid dimensions.
Halilaj and Urbano are constantly creating a collaborative fiction through their duo work: collective memory blends with personal anecdotes, and utopian thinking is triggered by imagining how the idea of kinship expands beyond the human: Plants and animals takeover, becoming elements of the theatrics of intimacy. The artists have staged performances in which raccoons, foxes, seagulls, as well as imagined hybrid creatures are the main characters, surrounded by blown-up flowers and environments that activate spaces of resilience and resistance through the celebration of otherness.
Queerness and intimacy are key aspects of the artists’ work: they exercise them as means of world-making. With each project, they reconsider the normative aspect of society, offering alternatives that trigger spaces of negotiation in which collective memory and social expectations can be reconfigured. Their collaborative practice, developed alongside their individual work, generates unexpected paths through modulation, dialogue, and creative challenges. This dynamic expands to how both studios generate an ecosystem in which these visions are negotiated and crystallized, often involving a large cast of participants, including researchers, musicians and other artists.
