Deniz Gezmiş

Over the 40 years of her artistic practice, Nil Yalter has recorded the people who live on the margins of the secure spaces designated by the powerful. In her artistic production, she explores the struggles and living spaces of marginalised people, especially workers, women, and immigrants. After moving to Paris in 1965, the artist became involved in the revolutionary movement there, and her work from that era bears the traces of her critical approach to gender roles and norms as well as how the women’s liberation movement perceives the body.
Constituting a turning point in Yalter’s practice, “Deniz Gezmiş” is the first work in which she brought together found materials, text, and performance, and it is also the first work in which the artist directly addressed a political subject. “Deniz Gezmiş” is comprised of photographs and acrylic paintings on paper that Yalter created in the small room in Istanbul where she lived during the time leading up to the executions of Deniz Gezmiş, Hüseyin İnan, and Yusuf Aslan. The artist rented a similar room upon her subsequent return to Paris, arranging it in a similar manner to the room in Istanbul, thus creating a space of contemplation as an “act of presence”. In this series of five paintings, the circular stains of acrylic and silver mark the lives of Gezmiş, Aslan and İnan on butcher’s paper. The circles fade and hollow as the line of death approaches. The passage of time leading up to the executions is charted on paper in centimetres. They engrave the tragedy on both the artist’s and the viewer’s memory, becoming an exercise in unforgetting.

"What Time Is It?", exhibition view, Arter, 2019.