A (rare) article by Nil Yalter

“The voice of popular poetry travels all the way to Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis” (p. 322)

Reading people—especially artists—is one of my quiet passions. Trained in art history since I was 17, I’ve been exposed to hundreds, if not thousands, of artworks, and to a wide array of critical texts written by art historians. But artist texts—those elusive, intimate documents—have remained rare in that journey. And yet, aren’t artists themselves the heartbeat of this discipline? Perhaps even its most vital source?

My engagement with artists’ writings really began in a self-taught, intuitive way. That interest—obsession, perhaps—for raw artistic thought, unfiltered and undigested, lies at the very heart of my doctoral research. I aim to treat the authors of the works I study as primary sources in their own right – but that’s for another story.

The last time I visited Nil, on June 6th to be precise, we were, of course, talking about her archives. I asked her if she had ever written anything. She looked up at the ceiling, as if searching through the shelves of her memory, then told me yes, though very rarely. She mentioned a text she wrote in 1984 for Les Temps Modernes, the political, literary, and philosophical journal founded by none other than Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty. I was instantly intrigued. I had never read Nil Yalter before. I might not be the only one thinking that there’s something deeply intimate about reading someone’s words? A privileged access to their inner thought process, their references, their critical eye – how they connect things.

Nil couldn’t quite recall what her text was about. She told me she didn’t write very much over the course of her career—just a few scattered texts, here and there. That made this 1984 article feel like a rare and precious window into her thinking. I promised her I would do my best to find it.

As soon as I got home, I typed the details I had into a search bar. Within minutes, I found it: “Exile is a Hard Job” an article Nil Yalter wrote for issue no. 456 of Les Temps Modernes, titled “Turkey: From Authoritarian Reformism to Assertive Liberalism,” published on July 12, 1984. A second search told me a copy was available at the BnF—the Bibliothèque nationale de France. I knew exactly where I’d be spending the next day.

I’ll spare you the logistical nightmare of tracking down the issue—lost somewhere in the labyrinth of that enormous library. But eventually, I found myself at a desk, buzzing with excitement. I was about to read Nil Yalter for the first time. It felt strangely intimate—like I was meeting her again, but this time at 49 years old. Is that strange?

As the title suggests, the article centers on her multidisciplinary work Exile is a Hard Job. Yalter shares the early development of the piece: the fraught relationship many Turks have with Western culture, and the working (and living) conditions of the men and women who had made France their new home. By the time she wrote these lines, she had already filmed Turkish families working in Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, as well as in Aubervilliers and Rungis. Those images would later become the backbone of the work. She also mentions her passionate need to embrace new technologies as an opportunity to find new ways to convey ideas, work with, and approach our dearest surroundings.

Yalter reminds us that The aesthetic genesis of the piece lies in a kilim pattern—a traditional rug design built on symmetrical repetition. She mirrors this visual logic in her editing process, doubling and reframing the recorded interviews with the workers, allowing their words to reverberate, like motifs.

The second major section of the article is dedicated to sharing the testimonies of the workers she interviewed—especially those employed in garment workshops around Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. These stories are a perfect example of how Yalter borrows from ethnographic methods and fieldwork. They bring out the voices and lived reflections of men and women from different generations and social backgrounds, showing just how socially engaged and critically grounded her work truly is.

I won’t say more for now (I’m also very tired!!)! I’ll return to specific passages in a future post.