Leyla Yenirce
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Biography
Ph: Katja RugeBorn 1992 in Qubîn, Kurdistan
Lives and works in Berlin, GermanyLeyla Yenirce finds her voice in the complex resonant spaces she creates, often working collaboratively, staging performances, incorporating found footage into her videos or appropriating images that are visible through dense layers of paint in her works on canvas. Yenirce draws on an archive of films and photographs that deal with figurations of resistance and aspects of military, media and cultural structures of dominance. Her process of collecting testifies to the widespread circulation of images depicting women in resistance, while also suggesting Yenirce's own media-influenced relationship with the country of her birth, Kurdistan. She is able to apply the technique of sampling in different artistic forms reacting to what she has found by layering and collaging in her compositions, elaborate installations, video works, performances and paintings.Yenirce has been described as a cultural theorist, filmmaker, musician, painter, performer and installation artist, essentially combining all of the aforementioned mediums in her artistic practice. It is precisely her willingness to transcend the boundaries of set disciplines that enables the artist to unite what is often mutually exclusive: feminism and war, pop culture and genocide, genuine longing and detached irony.Having graduated from the Hamburg University of Fine Arts, her first solo exhibition SO MUCH ENERGY took place at the Kunsthaus Hamburg in 2022. The artist will have a solo exhibition at the Landesmuseum Oldenburg in 2026. Her video work Being Strong is Hard was screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2024.
Among other notable institutions, Yenirce has exhibited at Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (2024); Museum Folkwang, Essen (2024); Deichtorhallen. Falckenberg Collection, Hamburg (2024); Kunsthalle Münster (2024); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2023); Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2023); and Halle für Kunst Lüneburg (2022). Yenirce is one of the recipients of the 2024 Kunstpreis Berlin and the 2022 ars viva Prize.
In addition to numerous other scholarships and prizes, including Federal Prize for Art Students, Bonn (2021), the Playground Art Prize, Nuremberg (2021) and the Hamburg Music Prize (2019), Yenirce has been part of various group exhibitions, including Video Digest #1, Moltkerei, Cologne (2023), Gallery Weekend Festival, Studio Mondial, Berlin (2023), Kein Schlussstrich Festival, Kampnagel, Hamburg (2021), Paradise, Kurdish Film Festival, Berlin (2020) and Hi Ventilation, Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg (2019).Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Mudam – Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg; Detroit Institute of Arts Museum; Kunstmuseum Magdeburg and Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker. -
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On her canvases, Yenirce appropriates, alienates, and samples a photograph taken by a news agency to a point almost beyond recognition, superimposing it and even sabotaging its visual impact with hastily applied, electrified strips of brightly colored oil pastels, paint, and acrylic spray – like an emotionally driven smear attack against the interpretive sovereignty of the image.
– Elisa R. Linn
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New Album: Souvenirs
As part of Yenirce’s recent exhibition Eye Level at Petzel Gallery in New York, the artist debuts a new album.
Souvenirs is an aural experience channeling an archive of memories. This LP, composed under the artist’s music project Rosaceae, imagines a space in which the listener can convoke with the dead, where the living are long gone. During a residency in Paris, the artist visited the Sacré-Cœur cathedral in Montmartre, overlooking the city. Yenirce was reminded of the construction of the Ilisu Dam and the subsequent flooding in her home region, as the artist’s family had to exhume and relocate their ancestral tombs to the tops of neighboring mountains. Yenirce shapes sound through recorded vocals, field recordings, and ambient instrumentation. Through these soundscapes, Yenirce opens a space for exchange and transmission.
The album was written and produced by the artist with additional vocals by Shira Lewis, mixed by Anders Fallesen and mastered by Rashad Becker. The vinyl copy includes a text written by Mazlum Nergiz.
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Works
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Exhibitions
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25 for 2025
11 January — 15 February 2025Explore -
Leyla Yenirce
Ich krieg Geschwindigkeit 4 November — 20 December 2023“In themselves, the pictures, the phases, the elements of the whole are innocent and indecipherable”, Sergei Eisenstein once remarked. “The blow” occurs only when the individual elements are linked together...Explore -
the state I am in
Curated by Elisa R. Linn and Lennart Wolff 23 June — 6 August 2022With works by James Gregory Atkinson, Noah Barker, Nicolas Ceccaldi, Peter Fend, Lea Grundig, Jacqueline de Jong, Laura Langer, Louise Lawler, Oswald Oberhuber, Li Ran, Lotty Rosenfeld, Bruno Serralongue, Bri...Explore
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External Exhibitions
A Piece of the Storm, 2024
Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg
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News
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Leyla Yenirce
Screening: 'Being Strong is Hard', 41. Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg
June 7, 2025, 16:30 pm 7 June 2025For more information, click here .Read more -
Leyla Yenirce
Berlin Art Prize 2024 18 March 2024Leyla Yenirce will be awarded with the Berlin Art Prize on March 18. The Berlin Art Prize - Jubilee Foundation 1848/1948 was established by the...Read more -
Leyla Yenirce
Landesmuseum Oldenburg
January 2026 1 January 2023More information coming soon.Read more
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Press
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Whitewall: "Leyla Yenirce: Anthropology of Responsibility"
Heike Dempster, 24 December 2024 -
Artforum: "THE ARTISTS’ ARTISTS" (Leyla Yenirce)
Jes Fan, Ryan Gander, Petrit Halilaj, Joan Jonas, Mataaho Collective, Archie Moore, Jordan Nassar, Adam Pendleton, Asad Raza, Marianna Simnett, Rose B. Simpson, Cameron Spratley, Carmen Winant, Leyla Yenirce, Yuan Goang-Ming, 1 December 2024 -
Frieze: "Leyla Yenirce’s Frenetic Paintings of Female Fighters"
GUILHERME VILHENA MARTINS, 13 December 2023 -
Monopol: "Watchlist" (Leyla Yenirce)
Ferial Nadja Karrasch, 22 April 2023 -
Missy Magazine: "Polycule der Kunst" (Leyla Yenirce)
Ferial Nadja Karrasch, 1 January 2023 -
taz: "Mutige Frauen" (Leyla Yenirce)
Alexander Diehl, 23 October 2022
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Publications
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Leyla Yenirce
Neue Kunst in Hamburg, 2024 2024Softcover, 96 pagesRead more
Publisher: Neue Kunst in Hamburg e.V. -
Leya Yenirce
LEYLA YENIRCE, 2024 2024Softcover, unpaged pagesRead more
Publisher: Behörde für Kultur und Medien Hamburg -
Leyla Yenirce
SPLITTER, 2024 2024Softcover, 24 pagesRead more
Publisher: Benedikt Seerieder | Kunstmuseum Magdeburg -
Leyla Yenirce
So Much Energy, 2022 2022 Read more -
Leyla Yenirce
ars viva 2023, 2022 2022 Read more
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Video
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Leyla Yenirce – SO MUCH ENERGY | Kunsthaus Hamburg, 2022
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Leyla Yenirce on Holy Water | ars viva Preis 2023
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