Velvet Stare
Curated by Emre Baykal, organized by Arter, İstanbul. September 2025 - April 2026.

Nilbar Güreş’s first institutional solo exhibition in Türkiye, Velvet Stare delves into the artist’s practice, which blurs the boundaries between humans and non-humans, reality and fiction, representation and abstraction. The exhibition, curated by Emre Baykal, will be on view between 11 September 2025 and 12 April 2026.

Presenting an extensive selection spanning from the artist’s early pieces to her most recent productions, Nilbar Güreş’s solo exhibition titled Velvet Stare encompasses works realised in diverse media, including painting, engraving, collage, photography, sculpture, and video. 

Blending storytelling with critical and dissenting narratives, Güreş creates a vibrant universe where humans, animals, plants, and mythological elements are intertwined and envisioned through ever-shifting connections. Infused with a strong capacity for generating new vocabularies that particularly challenge gender norms, her works subvert the binary and polarising structures shaping our understanding of the world through unexpected affinities and, by undermining established patterns of thought, invite viewers to explore alternative modes of coexistence. Since the beginning of her artistic practice, Güreş has embraced a wide spectrum of media and production methods – at times revisiting a single idea she holds fast to across different media, and at others, integrating multiple media within a single work. This plurality in materials and production methods not only shapes the formal qualities of the artist’s practice, but also reflects the multilayered nature of the themes at its core, such as the intermingling of different species, hybridity of forms, and resistance against marginalisation.

Velvet Stare opens a broad window onto Nilbar Güreş’s practice spanning more than twenty-five years, allowing us to trace the visual and intellectual layers that have shaped the artist’s work.

Nilbar Güreş’s first institutional solo exhibition in Türkiye, Velvet Stare, is accompanied by a publication that explores different layers of the artist’s practice. Designed by Didem Uraler Çelik, the publication features newly commissioned texts by Emre Baykal, Silvia Eiblmayr, and Lora Sarıaslan.

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Exhibition Booklet