The Türkiye Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia

 

Nilbar Güreş, MAYZU: A Tree with Coconuts and Bananas, 2022, mixed media, 400 x 640 x 200 cm. Ph: Kayhan Kaygusuz 

The Türkiye Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia presents A Kiss on the Eyes by Nilbar Güreş, celebrated for her poetic, critical, and witty engagement with cultural symbols, social inequalities, and questions of identity across a diverse array of media.  

Curated by Başak Doğa Temür, the exhibition brings together existing works and new productions spanning sculpture, installation, painting and mixed-media works on paper and fabric. A Kiss on the Eyes takes its cue from the Turkish phrase Gözlerinizden öperim, a traditional closing remark often used at the end of a letter or conversation.

The Türkiye Pavilion exhibition is coordinated by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) with the contribution of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Türkiye, the support of co-sponsor Trendyol Art, airline partner Turkish Airlines and production support of SAHA Association. The Vehbi Koç Foundation is also providing publishing support for the preparation of the exhibition catalogue.

Nilbar Güreş, MAYZU: A Tree with Coconuts and Bananas, 2022, mixed media, 400 x 640 x 200 cm. Ph: Kayhan Kaygusuz


A Kiss on the Eyes, Nilbar Güreş’s exhibition at the Türkiye Pavilion, brings together different strands of the artist’s dynamic and diverse practice. Celebrated for her poetic, critical, and witty engagement with cultural symbols, social inequalities, and questions of identity, Güreş has built a substantial body of work spanning photography, video, collage, and textiles. In recent years, her practice has increasingly expanded into three-dimensional forms, leading to this exhibition conceived for the Venice Biennale which will showcase a series of large-scale sculptures and installations. Created through an intensive, collaborative process in Istanbul, these works were produced between December 2025 and March 2026 with sculptors, metalworkers, tailors, and craftspeople. Treating material not only as a formal element but also as a carrier of memory and labour, these new works will be presented alongside selected pieces from earlier periods of the artist's practice.

Nilbar Güreş, Nilbar Güreş, 2025, pencil and lipstick on paper


In her curatorial statement, Başak Doğa Temür introduces the exhibition with the following words:

“The exhibition unfolds through spatial relationships rather than a linear narrative. Works remain close to the ground, lean, hang, or hover. Instead of guiding the viewer from one work to the next, the exhibition invites them to slow down and become aware of their own bodily position in relation to the space and to others. Moving through the exhibition becomes a negotiation between distance and proximity, vulnerability and resistance.
Such an approach characterises Nilbar Güreş’s work across multiple media, drawing on lived experience to address questions of gender, migration, and belonging. Her practice is shaped by situations marked by displacement, racism, xenophobia, and discrimination based on religion and belief, not as distant subjects but as conditions that structure everyday life. She often focuses on moments where social norms and power relations become visible through bodies, relationships, and acts of looking.
Materials such as textiles, garments, domestic objects, and organic forms play a central role in her work. These materials carry personal and collective histories and are altered through gestures of care, humour, and resistance. Intimacy and political tension exist side by side, allowing vulnerability to appear without connotations of passivity.”

The curatorial statement by Başak Doğa Temür is available at turkiyepavilion26.iksv.org.
from left: Nilbar Gunes, ph: Luca Gioacchino Di Bernardo; Başak Doğa Temür



A bilingual (Turkish and English) publication will accompany the exhibition, co-published by İKSV and Mousse Publishing, with the support of the Vehbi Koç Foundation. Alongside texts that closely engage with the artist’s practice and the exhibition, the book also includes a selection of poems, which address the concepts of subtlety and care at the heart of the exhibition’s conceptual framework across different contexts. Offering layered readings of Nilbar Güreş’s imagery, the texts in the book situate A Kiss on the Eyes within the continuity of the artist’s practice. The poems in the selection, in turn, foreground concepts such as displacement, memory, fragility, discrimination, plurality, and relationality, in line with the themes of gender, migration, and belonging, which are central to the artist’s practice.

In addition to being available to biennial visitors at La Biennale bookshops, the publication can also be found at selected art-focused bookshops worldwide. Online sales will be available via moussemagazine.it/shop/. 

The graphic design of the project and the book is undertaken by İpek Erdöl, with editorial work by Hazal Yonca Birincioğlu.