Nilbar Güreş: Velvet Stare

This book accompanies Nilbar Güreş’s solo exhibition Velvet Stare at Arter, opening with curator Emre Baykal’s text More Than One Nilbar. In his essay, Baykal sets out the conceptual framework of the exhibition while tracing the artist’s multilayered practice, in which humans, animals, plants, and mythological figures are intertwined and presented within ever-shifting relationships. The publication also features Silvia Eiblmayr’s essay Nilbar Güreş: Angels of Anarchy, which discusses the artist’s creation of visually and metaphorically unfathomable scenes that embody rebellious resistance and political partisanship. Lora Sarıaslan’s essay Mapping Nilbar Güreş focuses on the artist’s video Stranger (2004–2006), foregrounding the powerful discourse Güreş articulates through her own experiences of othering as she maps the city of Vienna with her body.
Designed by Didem Uraler Çelik, the book brings together reproduction photographs by Hadiye Cangökçe, installation views by Kayhan Kaygusuz, and Carmine Covino’s photographs documenting the artist’s life and work environment in Naples. It reflects Nilbar Güreş’s distinctive artistic language, which she has developed around multiple identities, social roles and instances of everyday life.
Held at Arter’s Gallery 2 between 11 September 2025 and 12 April 2026, Nilbar Güreş’s first institutional solo exhibition in Türkiye, Velvet Stare delves into the artist’s practice, which blurs the boundaries between humans and non-humans, reality and fiction, representation and abstraction. Presenting an extensive selection spanning from the artist’s early pieces to her most recent productions, the exhibition encompasses works realised in diverse media, including painting, engraving, collage, photography, sculpture, and video.