In this deeply personal account, Omar Kholeif takes readers on a journey through the life and work of Nil Yalter—a pioneering artist, whose creative practice has remained marginalised in the script of womanist art historical narratives.
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.
Kholeif fuses the genres of auto/biography to unfurl a social and historical context that examines concepts of ethnicity, the diaspora, and feminism. Gender and sexuality are unbuckled, presenting a distinct picture of the changing cultural climate both in France and globally during second half of the twentieth century.
I authored, conceptualised, and designed the book after authoring this article in Artforum ten years prior, entitled, "Change of Subject": https://www.artforum.com/features/omar-kholeif-on-nil-yalters-le-chevalier-deon-1978-233324/#:~:text=Yalter's%20subject%20(whose%20identity%20she,us%20straight%20in%20the%20eyes
It concerns her husband's transition from male to female in the 1970s. The book was funded mostly by Archivorum who were supported by EU funding.
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