It's International Workers' Day and there is an installation at the 60th International Art Exhibition in Venice that may be employed to make a reference to this celebration, urging us to reflect on labor-related themes and on labor as a metaphor.
Nil Yalter’s "Exile is a Hard Job" (1977-2024), showcased in the first room of the Central Pavilion at the Giardini, draws inspiration from the poem "Sofya'dan" (1957) by Turkish writer Nâzim Hikmet, who spent many years in exile in Russia.
Born in Cairo to Turkish parents, Yalter moved to Istanbul as a young girl. Initially a painter, her relocation to Paris broadened her horizons, leading her to embrace a more experimental approach in her practice.
A trailblazer in the French feminist art movement, Yalter shifted her focus to installations, performances, films, and photography, exploring themes like women's sexual liberation, the objectification of Middle Eastern women, and the struggles of migrants. By the early 1970s, she was at the forefront of using installation and video as mediums of expression, later moving into computer programming in the 1990s.
"Exile is a Hard Job" confronts viewers with fly-posted images of immigrants and exiles, the title of the project emblazoned in red above them in different languages.
The accompanying videos feature interviews with migrants, touching on themes of integration and stigmatization, intertwined with Turkish myths and poetry.
Working like an anthropologist, Yalter sheds light on their experiences and on the challenges and hardships faced by those who are forced to leave their homeland and start anew in a foreign land. Speculatively, the "job" aspect of the title could be interpreted in several ways: just as in a job, survival in unfamiliar surroundings demands effort and perseverance; besides, exiles face obstacles like language barriers and cultural differences, requiring them to adapt and forge new connections. Last but not least, this process is emotionally taxing and can result in a loss of identity and purpose, similar to the disruptions caused by a demanding job.
The work also subtly alludes to the discrimination faced by migrants in foreign lands, a very relevant theme in our times (consider that today, shortly after sunrise, the authorities dismantled a migrant and refugee tent city in Dublin, located near the International Protection Office; while it was deemed unhygienic and unsafe, the eviction, viewed as politically motivated, drew criticism for its timing and execution).
In the same space in the Central Pavilion there is also another work by Nil Yalter - "Topak Ev" (1973) (Turkish for "round house"), a felt yurt covered in lines from a novel by the author Yaşar Kemal about the exile of nomads.
Land-owners and governments forced them indeed to abandon their nomadic lives and move to the suburbs of Turkish cities, where they began to work in factories.
The tent is a reference to the experience of the artist in the Bektik nomadic community, which historically lived in round tents in Central Anatolia and migrated around the 10th century.
Easily assembled and disassembled, the portable tent allowed people to move around to search for food and water. Besides, the construction technology sheds light on the living modes of these communities and raises awareness of gender roles and societal norms that confine women to domestic spaces, providing an exploration of women's roles in the context of migration.
The yurt is indeed a reference to the fact that young women living in the Anatolian steppe would begin to make their own yurt as well as the decorations and tools for their future household. The yurt represented their dowry, the space where she would live and work as a wife, but also the place that she couldn't escape from. "Topak Ev" is therefore a symbol of both female empowerment and oppression.
The work of Yalter, who received a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 60ths International Art Exhibition in Venice, is not only relevant because it highlights the interconnected political, economic, feminist, and migrant issues persisting today, but also for its demonstration of art's singular ability to tackle such matters.
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