A pioneer in the French feminist art movement of the 1970s, Nil Yalter (born 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 traveled on foot to India as a pantomime artist. Yalter has lived in Paris since 1965.
She participated in the French counterculture and revolutionary political movement of the late 1960s. These social movements and ethnographic science have influenced the artist’s videos, performances and installations starting from the 1970s in the form of an idiosyncratic, pluralistic aesthetics.
The influence of abstract traditions, especially of Russian constructivism, can be observed in her paintings and digital works since her earliest works. Nil Yalter’s works reflect a style blending together all these influences along with autobiographical elements where the personal and the political intertwine.
Nil Yalter’s works have been exhibited at institutions such as the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, DC), Museum of Modern Art PS1 Gallery, Contemporary Art Center (Vancouver, Canada), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Her works are in the permanent collections of Tate Modern, Istanbul Modern, Centre Pompidou, F.N.A.C., Museum Ludwig among others.
Text courtesy Galerist


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