By Dylan Tighe
Tucked away inconspicuously in a corner of Spencer Dock, Green On Red Gallery generously rewards those who seek it out.
In a coup for the Docklands, the gallery played host to the first Irish solo exhibition by revered Turkish-French contemporary artist Nil Yalter.
Born in Cairo in 1938, Yalter, described by the gallery as “widely appraised as the first Turkish female video artist,” was awarded the 2024 Golden Lion lifetime achievement award at the Venice Biennale in recognition of the stature and significance of her work. This accolade heightened the privilege of experiencing her work in Dublin.
“Nil Yalter,” the gallery explained, “first moved to Paris in 1965 where she lives and works still” and is “a pioneer of the French feminist art movement of the 1970s.” “Her work,” it elaborated, “is research-based, involving both artistic and sociological research.”
This hybrid approach was evident from the work on display, some of it concerned with immigration, specifically the lives of Turkish immigrants on the margins. “The subject of exile,” the gallery concluded, “is a permanent feature of her work.”
The exhibition presented eight works, from her pioneering early grainy black-and-white video piece from 1974 – Headless Body/Belly Dance – to a project of Polaroid-based portraiture, combined with video, dated from 1977 to 2016 – Turkish Immigrants (Tower of Babel).
Against the visible backdrop of Spencer Dock, the exhibition gifted the viewer an intimate and compassionate encounter with the complexities of immigrant and artistic experience. Nil Yalter’s own transnational biography of artist, woman and immigrant imbues her work with an indelible authority.
In the visitors’ book, one attendee was moved to muse that “Art is political…but art is not party-politics…Art is about aesthetics, but not necessarily beauty. [A]rt can use beauty to be political.”
A thought-provoking and timely exhibition.
