Nil Yalter, Güneş Terkol

Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition

SAHA provides support for the participation of Nil Yalter and Güneş Terkol in the 60th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, which takes place between April 20 - November 24. 

Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the exhibition Stranieri Ovunque (Foreigners Everywhere) will take place in the Biennale's Central Pavilion (Giardini) and Arsenale. 

Appearing for the first time at the Venice Biennale, Terkol employs stitching or drawing directly onto cloth to create characters existing in an uncertain realm, characterised by ambiguous borders that encourage viewers to become storytellers.To create the textiles banners featured in biennial, she worked with two collectives, CO.GE.S don Lorenzo Milani and Casa Punto Froce, in a feminist workshop. Together with migrant women living in the Veneto region, they produced two new large poster works and as a group they marched to showcase the works.  In In the first room of the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, Yalter is exhibiting a reconstruction of Exhile is a Hard Job with her work Topak Ev (1973). Alongside the exhibition, Yalter, together with Italian-born Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino, will receive the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Biennale Arte 2024.

In addition, Yalter's public space intervention focusing on immigration, Exile is a Hard Job: Walls: Walls (Exile is a Hard Job: Walls) series, was published in English in April 2024, coinciding with the presentation of the series at the 60th Venice Biennale and Nil Yalter's award ceremony in Venice. 

Nil Yalter first realized Exile is a Hard Job: Walls in Spain in 2012 for her solo exhibition in Valencia. She recreated, as large-scale posters, the black and white photographs and drawings of a blue-colour worker family that she met in 1976 while creating the series “Immigrants”. Yalter put them up on the walls of Valencia and wrote with red paint in Spanish, “Exile is a Hard Job”; the last lines from Nazım Hikmet’s poem “from Sofia” (1957). This guerrilla gesture that takes Yalter’s artistic practice out of the bounds of art institutions, also gives visibility to daily struggles of immigrants that are often overlooked. 

About Güneş Terkol
Güneş Terkol (b. 1981, Ankara, Turkey) is a member of the artist group Ha Za Vu Zu. She uses textile products and techniques to shed light on the communication between sexual identities. Her solo exhibitions include: Frieze Frame, Frieze Art Fair, London (2012); The Major Forces That Move, NON, Istanbul, (2012); They Were Trying to Climb Upstream, NON, Istanbul, (2010); No Rite of Passage, Apartman Project, Istanbul (2008). Terkol participated in the ISCP New York artist program in 2013, Organ Haus, Chongqinq, China in 2011, and Gasworks, London in 2010.

About Nil Yalter
Nil Yalter (b.1938, Cairo, Egypt) is one of the pioneers of global feminist art, working in painting, sculpture and installation. Residing in Paris since 1965, Yalter was involved in the French countercultural and revolutionary political movements of the late 1960s, participating in contemporary debates on gender and Turkish migrant workers. At the 60th International Art Exhibition, Nil Yalter will exhibit her reconstructed work 'Exile is a hard job' and her iconic work 'Topak Ev' will be in the first room of the Central Pavilion.

About La Biennale di Venezia 60th International Art Exhibition "Stranieri Ovunque
The exhibition Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere is based on a series of works initiated in 2004 by the Paris-born and Palermo-based collective Claire Fontaine. The works consist of a growing number of neon sculptures in different colors embroidering the words "Foreigners Everywhere" in different languages. The phrase comes from the name of a Turin-based collective that fought against racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s.

The exhibition takes place in the Central Pavilion (Giardini) and the Arsenale and is organized in two parts: Nucleo Contemporaneo and Nucleo Storico.