Nil Yalter (b.1938, Cairo, Egypt), lives and works in Paris. A pioneer in the French feminist art movement of the 1970s, Yalter 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 practised pantomime and travelled by foot to India as a pantomime artist. Yalter has lived in Paris since 1965. 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 and the Long Beach Museum, 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 in international art fairs such as Art Basel Basel, ARCO Madrid, Art Cologne, FIAC, Frieze Masters, Armory Show, Frieze y Frieze NY, to cite a few, as well as the 10th Gwangju Biennial in 2014, the 15th Sharjah Biennial in 2023, the 13th Istanbul Biennial in 2013 and selected for the 60th Venice Biennale. 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 space for art in 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 Paris in 2018, the WIELS. The Absent Museum in Brussels in 2017, the New Tate Modern in London in 2016, the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2013 and 2009, the Long Beach Museum of Los Angeles in 2011, the PS1 MOMA in 2008 and the CGAC in Santiago de Compostela in 2007, among many others.