In this exhibition, Nilüfer Yıldırım invites the viewer to a territory that is neither completely familiar nor entirely foreign. The artist’s brush transforms the permeable boundary between abstraction and figuration into a field of research. According to Yıldırım, this uncertainty is in fact the very emotional and psychological ebb and flow of contemporary life.
The Anatomy of Connections: The Boundaries of “We”
At the heart of the works echoes a single word: Connection. The artist questions the delicate balance in the relationship that two people, two different identities, or the “other” within the individual establish.
Harmony of Dualities: Through texture, form, and color, she walks the tense tightrope between independence and interdependence, individual loneliness and togetherness.
Emotional Topography: She turns the nature of human relationships—sometimes very clear and familiar, sometimes fragmented and blurred—into “landscapes” with layers on the canvas.
The Language of Colors: Silence and Shared Experience
Yıldırım’s palette is not merely an aesthetic choice but a full emotional vocabulary in itself. The artist uses colors to carry both the silence of individual loneliness and the common rhythm of collective human experience.
Contrast Within Harmony: The harmony established by the coexistence of different colors actually makes visible the oppositions that create each other.
Layered Existence: While colors and textures represent the visible and invisible layers of being human, they leave space for the viewer to place their own story in these voids.
Traces Converging in Istanbul from Milan to New York
Working between Istanbul and Milan, Nilüfer Yıldırım’s background in graphic design and art history is felt in the formal discipline and color knowledge of her works. Her long production practice in New York has deepened her vision in the search for a global “human condition.”
Visit Notes
Venue: MERKUR (Nişantaşı, Istanbul).
Dates: Until January 3, 2026
