Nil Yalter
Solo Exhibition
8 November 2024 - 31 January 2025
Green On Red Gallery is delighted to announce Nil Yalter’s first solo exhibition in Ireland.
Nil Yalter was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1938. She has spent most of her life between her native Turkey and Paris. Widely appraised as the first Turkish female video artist, Yalter’s work is partly defined by the perspective of being a female immigrant. Throughout her career, Yalter has created an extensive body of work that seeks to shed light on cultural identity, ethnicity, immigration and feminism. Characterised by her use of tools such as photography, video, drawing, interactive media and text, her work challenges conventional historical narratives and pushes the boundaries of storytelling in contemporary art.
Originally a painter and educated at Robert College in Istanbul, Nil Yalter first moved to Paris in 1965 where she lives and works still. Immersed in circles of counter-artworld activists and feminists throughout her youth, Yalter is considered the author of the first interactive art work from Turkey and a pioneer of the French feminist art movement of the 1970s.
Her work has been exhibited and celebrated worldwide by major institutions and biennali. ( Also in November '24 see : https://www.ntmofa.gov.tw/en/News_Content.aspx?n=1618&s=226137 ) It gives a platform to marginalised communities such as immigrant workers, female labourers and former prisoners.
For a lifetime of original and groundbreaking art Nil Yalter has been awarded this year the Venice Biannale Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award.
Exile is a hard job is currently centre stage in Room 1 of the Gardini's Central Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024. The Venice Biennale closes on Sunday 24th of November 2024. ( See : https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024/nucleo-contemporaneo/nil-yalter )
Come and see the exhibition at the Green On Red Gallery, from May 16th to July 5th 2024. You can find us at Park Lane, Spencer Dock, North Wall, Dublin 1.
Nil Yalter Circular rituals 1992 Wall text and video with sound
Nil Yalter’s Circular Rituals (1992) is a one-minute video installation with wall-printed text. Created for the Trans-Voices: French and American Artists Address a Changing World Order project, organised by the American Center in Paris, the Whitney Museum and the Public Art Fund. Her work was displayed at these institutions, broadcast on Canal+ and MTV and shown on posters in the Paris and New York subways—bringing her message and imagery into public spaces.
Using imagery from a feminist demonstration in Algeria and scenes from Turkish immigrant labour in Paris’s Sentier district, Yalter connects the lives of individuals facing economic hardship and cultural upheaval with broader themes of identity and resistance.
Yalter uses footage she recorded in a Parisian sewing workshop, adding overlays that equate “ work ” with “ death, ” exposing the harsh conditions endured by Turkish immigrants in Paris. We see the physical toll and isolation of immigrant labour and at the same time the resilience of these workers.
Nil Yalter La Femme sans Tête/ Danse du Ventre 1974 Video
La Femme sans Tête/ Danse du Ventre ( 1974 ) is a video performance in which Nil Yalter interweaves cultural symbolism and feminist critique, turning a traditional belly dance into a profound exploration of body autonomy and the cultural control exerted over female sexuality. The piece was made possible by Dany Bloch, who lent Yalter the then-innovative Portapak camera for two days as part of the first major exhibition of video art, “Art, Video and Confrontation”, held at the ARC 2 ( Animation, Recherche, Confrontation ) of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in late 1974.
Filmed by Joël Boutteville, Yalter herself performs with her head out of the frame, dancing to gypsy music and inscribing anthropologist René Nelli’s text on her bare belly in a spiral from her navel outward. This text, drawn from Nelli’s Erotique et Civilisations, reflects on female sexual pleasure, the clitoris and its repression by patriarchal culture. Yalter reads and repeats the text as she writes, using both voice and body to counter the cultural silencing and physical control that women have long endured. As her body moves, the lines of text twist and flow, drawing the viewer into a cyclical rhythm that symbolically “ exorcises ” patriarchal restrictions on female sexuality. Yalter wears a self-made skirt inscribed with hand-written text, further emphasising the layered meaning within the performance.
Yalter wrote text directly onto her skin, drawing inspiration from a ritual described by anthropologist Bernard Dupaigne, practised in parts of Africa and Anatolia, where verses of the Quran were written on the stomachs of " disobedient " or infertile women to ensure fertility and obedience. Yalter critiques this tradition by transforming it into a feminist statement. Her use of the belly dance, originating from the Middle East and historically misinterpreted as erotic by outsiders, further reclaims cultural expression, repositioning it as a critique of sexual oppression rather than an inducement to desire.
Through La Femme sans Tête/ Danse du Ventre, Yalter highlights the intersection of cultural and gendered experience, using the medium of video to convey both personal and social critique. This pioneering work situates her at the early intersection of video art and feminist performance and it was a precursor to her later multimedia and socio-critical projects that blend art with anthropology and sociology.