Nil Yalter: The Story Behind Each Word Must Be Told

Ab-Anbar is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Nil Yalter, The Story Behind Each Word Must Be Told, curated by Övul Ö. Durmuşoğlu. The exhibition includes a selection of video, installation, painting, mixed media and sound based works.

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 intersectional 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 central threads of Yalter’s practice coming from the nomadic lives and their resistance in Aşık 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 Aşık Nesimi Çimen in 1979, who was at that time in exile in Paris. Born in Adana, Turkey, in 1931, Nesimi was the master of cura as one of the leading bards of his generation that connected the centuries old Aşık tradition with contemporary issues and struggles of his time.

The exhibition opens with a curutorial walkthough in presence of the artist. It also involves a performative element, In the land of troubadours (Aşıklar Diyarı), a music and word- based gathering tributing Aşık Nesimi and his special friendship with Yalter. This performance will be on June 2, 2024. For further details about the event, plese refer to this link.

In the land of troubadours (Aşıklar Diyarı) is developed in partnership with UP Projects and London Gallery Weekend.