Image: Nil Yalter, Harem, 1980. Used with permission from the artist.

Artist Talk: Nil Yalter

Thu 21 March 2019

Kettle's Yard House and Gallery

Join us for a talk by the Turkish-French artist Nil Yalter on her exploration of feminism, politics and exile. With Kettle’s Yard curator Amy Tobin and Deniz Turker (History of Art / Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies).

Nil Yalter, (b. 1938) is a Cairo-born Turkish contemporary feminist artist, who lives and works in Paris. She started painting at an early age, took dance classes, and traveled to India on foot as a pantomime.
She had her first exhibition of paintings inspired by this travel at the French Cultural Institute in Mumbai in 1957. Between 1963-1964 she worked as stage and costume designer for theatre companies in Istanbul.
In 1963, she participated in the 3rd Paris Biennale with abstract compositions. Yalter moved to Paris in 1965 and took part in the French counterculture and revolutionary movements which prompted her to move away from abstract constructivist painting to start working with the medium of video and to use her own body. In the 1970s, she led the beginning of the French feminist art movement. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Yalter created a series of works combining her interest in gender issues and feminism with a focus on marginalized communities such as migrant workers in Europe and former prisoners. She was a member of several female artists’ collectives in Paris in the 1970s which gathered around socially engaged practices and the women’s struggle for visibility in the arts. In the 1990s with the advent of digital technologies, she developed her video practice by using 3D animation techniques and electronic sound editing.
Yalter continues to think through the struggles of women, minorities and immigrants in diverse representational modes from video, painting, drawing, photography, collage to performance and installation.

FREE, but booking is recommended.

Cost: FREE