Topak Ev

(Artist's Book - Handmade) Yalter, Nil. Topak Ev [cover title]. N.p. (Paris?): 1973. Oblong 8vo (27.5 cm); materials in five vinyl sleeves clamp-mounted in a Lilliput-brand document binder with the artist's handwritten cover title: “Topak Ev” 1973 Nil Yalter 250”. Holograph postcard in airmail envelope addressed to G üngor & Ilhan Mimaroglu laid in, postmarked Paris 1976. Very Good. Rare and otherwise unrecorded document of the Turkish feminist's ground-breaking installation at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1973 about nomadic architecture (yurtstents), the lives of the yurt's female inhabitants, and shamanism in Turkey and other Central Asian nations. Born in Egypt in 1938, Yalter grew up in Istanbul and moved to Paris in 1965 to study art. Her work came of age alongside the Mai ‘68 movement; trips back to Turkey where nomadic people were being forcibly settled further radicalized her. Much of her work, which she describes as “ethno-critical,” relates to women, immigrants, prisoners, and displaced peoples. According to Yalter in an interview with Esther Ferrer, “My first important exhibition took place in 1973 at ARC, the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Ville de Paris. I called it Topak EV I. The central theme of the show was the yourte. In 1971 I had gone back to Turkey, which was suffering severe repression at the time due to several recent political events. I became interested in the tents of the nomads and nomadic life in general. The nomads could no longer roam freely because the lands that formerly belonged to the community were now privately owned. The yourte symbolizes their freedom. Curiously enough, however, the women who build these round tents in the shape of a womb practically spend their whole lives inside of them, sheltered from the real world outside. From the time she's a teenager, the woman spends her time decorating the tent and making it as beautiful as possible, this being considered an important attribute in a wife. A lot of prestige is given to the parents of a girl who gets married. The yourte is in fact symbolic of the relation of the father's world to the husband's.” Around the same time she became friends with ethnologist Bernard Dupaigne, the director of the Le musée de l'Homme. The present work includes a typescript essay attributed to Dupaigne on the yourte: “Maison des femmes ou prison des femmes.” $2000 Materials assembled by Yalter in the album include: a photograph of the eponymous installation at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris mounted in resin, a Xerox showing photographs of Central Asian yurts with Russian captions and holograph French translations, two samples of goat and sheep fur mounted on board with holoraph annotations, a photographic contact sheet bearing 18 images and holographic identifications of yurts in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, and a two-page stapled typescript attributed to Bernard Dupaigne.