About this Event
Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu, curator of Nil Yalter's solo show 'The Story Behind Each Word Must Be Told', will be doing a walkthrough of the exhibition at the gallery, with Nil Yalter present at the event.
Curator biography
Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu is a curator, writer, and educator working on constructive critiques of civilization, sustainability of intersectional futures, and practices of togetherness. She co-leads Art in Discourse at Braunschweig University of Art along with Ana Teixeira Pinto. Durmuşoğlu recently curated two major monographic exhibitions: Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz’s 'Portrait of a Movement' at CA2M, Madrid, and Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2022–23), and Katrina Daschner’s 'Burn & Gloom, Glow & Moon: Thousand Years of Troubled Genders' at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2022), also editing their publications. Between 2021 and 2023 she co-curated the 3rd and the 4th editions of Autostrada Biennale in Kosovo with Joanna Warsza. Earlier, she taught as a guest professor at Universität der Künste Berlin Graduate School; curated programs for the 10th, 13th, and 14th Istanbul Biennials; worked as curatorial advisor for Gülsün Karamustafa's 'Chronographia' in Hamburger Bahnhof in 2016; worked as a curator for steirischer herbst 2018; and coordinated and organized different programs and events at Maybe Education and Public Programs for dOCUMENTA (13). She lives and works in Berlin.
About the exhibition
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 also involves a performative element, a music and word- based gathering tributing Aşık Nesimi and his special friendship with Yalter as part of London Gallery Weekend.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Ab-Anbar Gallery, 34 Mortimer Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
