ABSTRACT
In October 1973, a life-size, Asian-style round tent appeared at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris in France. When the display opened to the public, this authentic installation called Topak Ev (Nomad's Tent or Yurt; literally Round House), which was created by the Turkish visual artist Nil Yalter (b. 1938) for her first solo show in the city, piqued the art world's curiosity. Originally an Istanbulite and a self-proclaimed Marxist-feminist who settled to Paris in 1965, Yalter modelled Topak Ev after the dwelling houses of the long-forgotten nomadic communities of central Anatolia. In this chapter, I regard Yalter's nomadic tent as a site that connects the transnational “worlds” in which she has participated, a connection that cuts across multiple countries, political histories, and personal narratives. Addressing Topak Ev's perspective on Third-World women's difference, I investigate the work's many messages in the backdrop of mainstream feminist theories of the 1960s and 1970s. And finally, exploring specific elements of the tent, I consider the creation of Topak Ev as an act of resistance and remembrance that stands to confront far older translocal conflicts in the Anatolian geography.
