Nil Yalter, an emblematic and political monography
MAC VAL is inaugurating an original exhibition by Nil Yalter, an artist internationally recognised for the engagement and “multistylistic” nature of her art, ranging from video to painting, from collage to photography, from performance to installation. Of this militant artist born in 1938, art critic Georges Boudaille wrote in 1979: “Nil Yalter sees herself as an instrument, an amplifier, in favour of almost obsessional themes: the situation of all immigrant workers and the position of women in all societies.”
Her works, her forms derive from her documentary or sociological material. She explores the conditions of excluded populations or individuals – immigrant male and female workers, exiled communities, women prisoners – by means of investigations in the field and interviews. Nil Yalter gives a voice to individuals who express the difficulty of their everyday life in their quarter, town, country, or society.
“TRANS/HUMANCE” is the first major museum exhibition devoted to Yalter’s work. It follows the one organised by FRAC Lorraine in 2016 and is designed to be complimentary to the one organised at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and at the Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. From the constructivist paintings of the 1960s to the most recent developments, it offers a retrospective of this body of work which takes a feminist and Marxist perspective on such issues as immigration, gender and class.
Discrimination is the driving theme of this multimedia body of work combining drawing, video, painting, performance, text, photography and objects. This exhibition is also accompanied by the first monograph on the artist’s work to be published in French.
Nil Yalter won the AWARE prize in 2018.
Exhibition catalogue available at the opening.
