Nil Yalter

Nil Yalter is a militant artist. The art critic Georges Boudaille thus wrote in 1979:
« Nil Yalter wants to be an instrument, an amplifier, in favor of almost obsessional themes: the situation of all immigrant workers and the situation of women in all societies, whatever they may be. »

Militancy and form are all too often opposed, but, precisely, Yalter’s « socio-critical » art denies such opposition. Her works, her forms are derived from documentary or sociological material, as it was often claimed in the 1970s. Since then, Nil Yalter has been exploring, through the means of the field investigation and the interview, life condition of excluded people or persons: immigrant workers, exiled communities, women, prisoners. The artist gives the floor to individuals who express their difficulty in living daily in a situation of exile in a neighborhood, a city, a country, or in society. Yalter’s works are subtle, they reflect social and personal situations: they emphasize the painful separation between the public sphere and the intimate sphere while emancipating individuals from the categories in which « we » enclose them.
If video and photography are her main tools, her productions that combine text, drawing and collage are most often the result of editing. In a general way, Yalter’s works are part of the document, her interview videos are particularly constituting a unique and precious archive.Nil Yalter (1938) is a self-taught French artist of Turkish descent. She came to Paris in 1968 and held her first solo exhibition at the ARC, musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, in 1973. Her recently rediscovered work has been the subject of a retrospective at the Arter Space for Art (Istanbul) in 2016, and of many solo shows, particularly at Galerist (Istanbul) in 2018, La Verrière – Fondation d’entreprise Hermès (Brussels), MOT International (London) in 2015 and Hubert Winter Gallery (Vienna) in 2014. The first retrospective exhibition of her work in France was held in 2016 at 49 Nord 6 Est – FRAC Lorraine (Metz). Her works are featured in the collections of Tate Modern, Istanbul Modern, musée d’Art moderne – Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris Musées, Museum Ludwig (Cologne) and CNAP.