The Story Behind Each Word Must Be Told

It is a fragile world we live in, made of many intricate processes like an ongoing spider web. No word stands alone to explain this fragility and intricacy. And the responsibility of being human comes from telling the story behind each word, so that there is no mistake in what is meant. For more than half a century, Nil Yalter’s work has been dedicated to uncovering the strength, resilience and hope that makes this fragile, intricate core, through stories of people that keep the world running with a deep critique of injustice. She has woven these stories with elements she borrowed from the ancient oral and visual traditions of Anatolia and codes of modernism she felt close to. “The Story Behind Each Word Must Be Told” focuses on one of the core threads of Yalter’s practice coming from the nomadic lives and their resistance in Asik tradition in Anatolia for centuries: the word and the utterance, its sound and its music. From Topak Ev (1973) to D’Après Stimmung (1973), Shaman (1979), Exile is a Hard Job - Estranged Doors (1983) to Pixelismus (La Chora) (1993), Sound of Painting (2008) and Lord Byron Meets Shaman Woman (2009) she deals with the word and its intricate utterance in visual and oral forms.

The Story Behind Each Word Must Be Told is inspired by the LP vIt is a fragile world we live in, made of many intricate processes like an ongoing spider web. No word stands alone to explain this fragility and intricacy. And the responsibility of being human comes from telling the story behind each word, so that there is no mistake in what is meant. For more than half a century, Nil Yalter’s work has been dedicated to uncovering the strength, resilience and hope that makes this fragile, intricate core, through stories of people that keep the world running with a deep critique of injustice. She has woven these stories with elements she borrowed from the ancient oral and visual traditions of Anatolia and codes of modernism she felt close to. “The Story Behind Each Word Must Be Told” focuses on one of the core threads of Yalter’s practice coming from the nomadic lives and their resistance in Asik tradition in Anatolia for centuries: the word and the utterance, its sound and its music. From Topak Ev (1973) to D’Après Stimmung (1973), Shaman (1979), Exile is a Hard Job - Estranged Doors (1983) to Pixelismus (La Chora) (1993), Sound of Painting (2008) and Lord Byron Meets Shaman Woman (2009) she deals with the word and its intricate utterance in visual and oral forms.

The Story Behind Each Word Must Be Told is inspired by the LP vinyl record “le chant des troubadours de turquie: Achik Nesimi” that Nil Yalter produced in collaboration with Bernard Dupaigne for Asik Nesimi in 1979, who was in exile in Paris at the time. Born in Adana, Turkey, in 1931, Nesimi was one of the leading bards of his generation that connected the centuries old Aasik tradition with contemporary issues and struggles of his time. The exhibition also involves a performative element, a music and word-based gathering tributing Asik Nesimi and his special friendship with Yalter as part of London Gallery Weekend.inyl record “le chant des troubadours de turquie: Achik Nesimi” that Nil Yalter produced in collaboration with Bernard Dupaigne for Asik Nesimi in 1979, who was in exile in Paris at the time. Born in Adana, Turkey, in 1931, Nesimi was one of the leading bards of his generation that connected the centuries old Aasik tradition with contemporary issues and struggles of his time. The exhibition also involves a performative element, a music and word-based gathering tributing Asik Nesimi and his special friendship with Yalter as part of London Gallery Weekend.

Nil Yalter (b.1938, Cairo, Egypt), lives and works in Paris.

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 mo...

Nil Yalter (b.1938, Cairo, Egypt), lives and works in Paris.

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. 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.