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Nil Yalter, Topak Ev, 1973. Courtesy of the artist
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In this deeply personal account, author Omar Kholeif takes readers on a journey through the life and work of Nil Yalter—one of the pioneering artists of our time. Born in Cairo in 1938 and raised in Turkey, Yalter has lived in France since 1965. Over the course of six decades, the artist has created genre-expanding artistic projects across disciplines, innovating across both form and content regardless of the complex sociopolitical context that has surrounded her.
Below you can read an excerpt from the chapter “Where We Begin” featured in the publication.
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EVENT AND BOOK SIGNING
If in Milan next week, join artist, author and curator, Dr. Omar Kholeif, at Reading Room, as they read from the new book, Nil Yalter: Circular Tension, published by Mousse and supported by Archivorum. Kholeif will begin with a select passage, to then read excerpts of other pivotal texts authored for Mousse Magazine. In these various pages, they confront the anxious constitution of the authorial voice.
An exercise in reading, writing, and publishing with Omar Kholeif
Thursday, June 27, 6.30 PM
at Reading Room, Milan
Via Mincio 10, Milan, Italy 20139
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The publication Nil Yalter: Circular Tension. Photo: Mousse Magazine & Publishing
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Where We Begin
by Omar Kholeif
“I was born in Cairo, but I woke up in Istanbul!” professes Nil Yalter. Her arms stretch toward her face, framing it as she holds my gaze, almost as if to task.
This afternoon in Paris and London, mediated across a web platform, Yalter and I are convening for the first time in nearly a decade. Ten years of loss, grief, and subsequent resuscitation have affected us both. As with any biographical tale, origin stories help locate the reader, be they the subject of a particular truth, fiction—or, in the case of many artists, one of constant myth. Yalter was born soon after the end of the Ottoman Empire in what was once perceived to be an artistic and scientific cradle of civilization—Cairo, Egypt. Her father was an economist working under the new regime of Turkish president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and was primarily responsible for directing the nation’s monopoly of the tobacco trade. As Yalter speaks, mental sketches begin of my late grandfather, a physician and former dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Assiut, exhaling plumes of smoke in the familial living room. He would have been sixteen years old when the artist was born, the same age that I took up smoking.
CONTINUE READING
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Nil Yalter, Turkish Immigrants (still), 1977–ongoing; part of Exile Is a Hard Job, 1977–ongoing. Courtesy of the artist and Ab-Anbar, London
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Omar Kholeif the avatar of Dr. O, a sentient organism that lives amongst cable and wire curating from their desktop. Director of collections and senior curator at Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, Kholeif is a visiting professor at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art Research Unit, Teesside University, Dr. Kholeif is the curator of over 100 exhibitions. They are also the author, co-author, or editor of over 40 volumes, which have been translated into 17 languages. Recent volumes include, Goodbye, World! Looking at Art in the Digital Age (2018), Time, Forward! (2019), Art in the Age of Anxiety (2020), Hrair Sarkisian: The Other Side of Silence (2021), imagine/otherwise 1: Sonia Balassanian (2022), In the Heart of Another Country (2022), Helen Khal: Gallery One and Beirut in the 1960s (2023) and Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs. Dr. Kholeif is currently at work on a new film, CLOUD DRAIN.
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Mousse Magazine and Publishing
via Decembrio 28, 20137 Milan
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