Galerist Turns 25 With a Show About Self-Portraiture
Location: Galerist, Passage Petits-Champs, Pera, Istanbul
Date: September 16 – November 7, 2026
Project: Labour of Love, Galerist's 25th anniversary group show
Why it Matters: Erwin Wurm, Julian Opie and Thomas Ruff are among the 40-plus names
Near the entrance, Nil Yalter's video Skin Story plays on a loop. It is five minutes long and shows border stamps and travel documents printed over bare skin. Yalter has spent her career on migration, exile and the work women do, and in 2024 she received the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale.
Her video is one of more than forty works in Labour of Love, the show Galerist has put together for its twenty-fifth anniversary. The gallery asked each of its artists to choose a piece that represents their own work, a kind of self-portrait made through what they make. Alongside Yalter are Turkish artists including Ayşe Erkmen, İpek Duben, Semiha Berksoy, Hussein Chalayan and Elif Uras, and international names including Gavin Turk, Erwin Wurm, Julian Opie and Thomas Ruff. The works range from painting and sculpture to textiles, video and performance.
Galerist opened in Istanbul in 2001 and has held more than two hundred exhibitions since. It has been in Passage Petits-Champs, a nineteenth-century arcade in the Pera district, since 2011, and is run under women's leadership. Labour of Love ends an anniversary year that gave solo shows to the women on the gallery's roster through 2026.
Labour of Love runs through November 7.
More info: galerist.com.tr
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Photo credit:
Nil Yalter, Skin Story, 2003, video, 5'13". Courtesy of Nil Yalter and Galerist
