Nil Yalter Monograph

Nil Yarter was born in Cairo in 1938 due to his dad?s assignment and spent her early youth in Istanbul. Yalter was painting since her childhood but during her education at Robert College, she was also interested in theatre, dance and pantomime in addition to painting. The artist, who continued her works without an art education in the traditional way, periodically opened solo exhibitions at Turkish-German Gallery in Istanbul and exhibited her abstract works there, since early 1960?s. After visiting Paris for the first time in 1956 and building close relationships with the art scenery of her generation by visiting the city for many more times, Yalter decided to be a resident of this city in 1965. While developing her works in a period on the verge of 1968 student riots, at first she produced generally large scaled canvasses that can be considered in the frames of concepts like Op Art, Minimalism and Pure Abstraction. However, the pioneering French art scenery that she was in dialogue with, directed Yalter to search for her expression also with the materials that stand outside the canvas. The artist, who got into an essential ?process of questioning identity? between 1965-1970, focused her explorations on the daily events, social facts, prejudices and inclined towards experimenting with the techniques like drawing, photography, video and performance.

The era of questioning that came together with the 1968 events, when Nil Yalter went through a ?transformation? in every sense of the word, made her think and produce works about the subjects like political discrimination, exploitation of immigrant laborers by the capitalist system, suppressant acts of male dominant society over women and racism. In these years, Nil Yalter dealt with the living conditions of immigrant workers, especially the Turkish laborers, started to document her researches and conversations, and by the help of sound and visuals, she started to position the social classes that are ?alienated? right into the center of her works. These events opened the doors of a personal exhibition at A.R.C. Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the ?Topak Ev? project for the artist. This presentation in which Suzanne Page assumed the duty of production exhibition was the first personal show of a Turkish artist in this significant museum, and also positioned Nil Yalter to a certain place among the current trends of Paris that was in search of a different path during the time. Following this exhibition, Nil Yalter announced her ?criticizer attitude? primarily with her videos that she exhibited consecutively at many important group exhibitions and also in her installations, video sculptures and interdisciplinary works that she produced by using the resources of New Media Art.

The retrospective book, edited by art writer and curator Derya Yücel, is an archive of Yalter?s work in its entirety. Along with texts by art historians Juan Vicente Aliaga, Fabienne Dumont and the new media artist Melis Tezkan, the monoghraph also includes an interview with the artist by Adriano Pedrosa.