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A pioneer in the French feminist art movement of the 1970s, Nil Yalter (b. 1938, Cairo) was educated at Robert College, the prestigious American secondary educational institution in Istanbul. While she was engaged in dance, theatre and painting during this time, she also practiced pantomime and travelled by foot to India as a pantomime artist, and later settled in Paris in 1965. Defined by the perspective of being a female immigrant, Yalter has generated an extensive body of work that orbits social aspects such as cultural identity, ethnicity, immigration and feminism and is characterized by its use of diverse media. Yalter, considered the author of the first interactive art work from Turkey, has created numerous projects in which she has implicated her spectators and through photographs, documents, video art and performances has managed to make her message about the vulnerability of human rights in certain territories heard by a wide audience. She participated in the French counter culture and revolutionary political movement of the late 1960s, immersing herself in the debates around gender, migrant workers from Turkey, and other issues of the time. These social movements and ethnographic science have influenced the artist’s videos, performances and installations from the 1970s in the form of an idiosyncratic, pluralistic aesthetics. The influence of abstract traditions, especially that of Russian constructivism can be observed in her paintings and digital works since her early years. Nil Yalter’s works reflect a style that blends together all these influences along with autobiographical elements where the personal and the political intertwine.
Nil Yalter is the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the Venice Biennale 2024. Her works are part of institutional collections such as the Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, the Ludwig Museum, the Long Beach Museum, Istanbul Modern and Fonds National d’Art among others, as well as private collections such as the Art Collection Telecom, Colección Olor Visual, Reydan Weiss Collection and Fundación Foto Colectania. She has participated the 10th Gwangju Biennial in 2014, the 15th Sharjah Biennial in 2023, the 13th Istanbul Biennial in 2013 and the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. Among her most recent solo exhibitions stand out examples such the ones at the Museum Ludwig, the MAC-VAL and the Hessel Museum of Art in 2019, the FRAC Lorraine and the ARTER Istanbul in 2016, and the ones at the Centre Pompidou in 2012 and 2010. Her work has been part of group exhibitions at the MoMa New York in 2023, Palais de Beaux-Arts in 2018, the WIELS. The Absent Museum in 2017, the Tate Modern in 2016, the Centre Pompidou in 2013 and 2009, the Long Beach Museum in 2011, the PS1 MOMA in 2008 and the CGAC in Santiago de Compostela in 2007, among many others.
Nil Yalter is the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the Venice Biennale 2024. Her works are part of institutional collections such as the Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, the Ludwig Museum, the Long Beach Museum, Istanbul Modern and Fonds National d’Art among others, as well as private collections such as the Art Collection Telecom, Colección Olor Visual, Reydan Weiss Collection and Fundación Foto Colectania. She has participated the 10th Gwangju Biennial in 2014, the 15th Sharjah Biennial in 2023, the 13th Istanbul Biennial in 2013 and the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. Among her most recent solo exhibitions stand out examples such the ones at the Museum Ludwig, the MAC-VAL and the Hessel Museum of Art in 2019, the FRAC Lorraine and the ARTER Istanbul in 2016, and the ones at the Centre Pompidou in 2012 and 2010. Her work has been part of group exhibitions at the MoMa New York in 2023, Palais de Beaux-Arts in 2018, the WIELS. The Absent Museum in 2017, the Tate Modern in 2016, the Centre Pompidou in 2013 and 2009, the Long Beach Museum in 2011, the PS1 MOMA in 2008 and the CGAC in Santiago de Compostela in 2007, among many others.