Nil Yalter, 11 mars 1978, Action de cinq femmes, 1978
Nil Yalter
11 mars 1978, Action de cinq femmes

Nil Yalter is a video artist, born in 1938 in Cairo and raised in Istanbul. She lives in Paris since 1965. In the 1970s, she became concerned with the situation of women and immigrants in different countries, depicting this in her works, which span different genres and often combine photographs and drawings. In 1973, she created the installation "A Nomad’s Tent that is a Study of Private, Public, and Feminine Spaces". Since the 1980s, she has expanded her artistic repertoire to include video, and in the 1990s she began working with multi-media installations. She continues to be politically active and aware today, and her approach to the technological possibilities of art remains vibrant.

artist's website: www.nilyalter.com

On Saturday, 11 March 1978, a day of actions on the subject of confinement took place in Françoise Janicot’s workshop in Paris. The project was also done in the context of the Collectif Femmes/Art, a group of women artists who were active from 1976 to 1980. Five women artists successively staged the following performances for 12 hours: Elisa Tan conjugated the verb “to work”. Françoise Janicot performed J’aime ta binette (I like your face), using collages of newspaper articles on women, and 3 years 3 minutes, using clothing that has been worn for 3 years. Nil Yalter acted out everyday life in a harem using a few pieces of furniture and utensils. Claude Torey displayed photographs. Lea Lublin performed Dissolution in Water, using a large banner on which stereotypes about women were written. Then she ripped the banner off the wall and threw it into the Seine. This video was found in 2011 when art historian Fabienne Dumont was working on a book with Nil Yalter. It was digitalised by the French National Library and has never been shown in public before. It is one of the few videos of the French feminist art movement in the 1970s.

Courtesy Nil Yalter

Document media
Video, b&w, sound, 13:00 min

Issue date
1978

Relations
Françoise Janicot (JAN 1)
Miriam Sharon (SHA 1)


Tags
activism, collectivity, his/herstory