Nilbar Güreş, 1977

Born in 1977 in Istanbul, Nilbar Güreş graduated from the Painting Department of Marmara University in 2000 and completed a master’s degree at the Vienna Fine Arts Academy, Department of Painting and Graphics, in 2002. She lives and works in Vienna and Istanbul. Güreş is not interested in rigid frameworks, which generalize and limit women’s problems, but rather engages with the realities and ironies of life. She features lesbian, headscarved or Kurdish women who are situated outside of the enlightened and progressive efforts of the Republic; her approach points to a shared state of womanhood through these different identities.

The video “Undressing” is a performance showing the artist wearing a costume that completely covers her face and looks like a burqa, but in fact consists of numerous different headscarves. Slowly, she takes off the headscarves one by one while mentioning the names of women she personally knows who live across Europe. The artist says this about the performance: “As persons living in Europe, often with foreign nationalities, these women, as well as myself, with or without a headscarf, represent neither Turkey, Iran, or Afghanistan nor any other country, nor Islam itself. Even so, they often serve as targets, unfortunately. The majority of Muslim women living in Europe, with or without a headscarf, first and foremost represent their individual selves and not religious or nationalist ideas.”