Leyla Yenirce
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Installation view: Carrying, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, 2026. Ph: Studio Maximilian Geuter. -
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Album: Souvenirs
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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Installation view: SO MUCH ENERGY, Kunsthaus Hamburg, 2022
Leyla Yenirce
Nacht. Schlaf. Die Sterne., 2021Single-channel video and sound installation, color, five propellers operated with electric motors on steel stands, 17:06 min
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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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News
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Leyla Yenirce
'KAF Young Art Prize Final Exhibition' (Group Show), Krupa Art Foundation, Wrocław
From November 6, 2026 6 November 2026More information coming soon.Read more -
Leyla Yenirce
'Carrying' (Group Show), Museum Brandhorst, Munich
May 14 – November 8, 2026 14 May 2026Already in its title, “Carrying” points to how places carry certain (hi)stories. This exhibition project with its accompanying events activates various spaces inside and outside...Read more -
Leyla Yenirce
Finkenwerder Förderpreis from HFBK Hamburg
2026 26 November 2025Leyla Yenirce (born in 1992 in Qubîn, Kurdistan) completed her master’s degree under Jutta Koether at the HFBK Hamburg in 2022 and has already been...Read more
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Ph: Leyla Yenirce
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Ph: Leyla Yenirce
Leyla Yenirce
Paradise, 2019, together with Mazlum NergizFive-channel video and sound installation, color, 21:30 minDimensions variableEdition of 3 + 1 APB-LYENIRCE-.23-0027Further images
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'Paradise' deals with the emotional language of the images of female Kurdish martyrs and freedom fighters. The stressful, overburdening pictorial seance displays the fine line between transfiguring mythology and resistant...'Paradise' deals with the emotional language of the images of female Kurdish martyrs and freedom fighters. The stressful, overburdening pictorial seance displays the fine line between transfiguring mythology and resistant emancipation. In 1996 at 23 years of age, Zeynep Kınacı (codename: Zilan) straps explosives around her stomach disguised as a pregnant women in the Tunceli (Dersim) region and blows herself and seven Turkish soldiers to death, while the young British woman Anna Campbell dies in 2018 for the freedom of Kurdistan in Afrin and becomes the longed-for star who also finds fans in Europe. The martyr's death is beyond our experience, what we are left with is a Before and an After. This context unfolds in Paradise: on five screens, the varied processes of a cross-genre deification are depicted — processes that can only take place through viewing. The video installation was premiered at the media art festival "Digifem" at Kampnagel in Hamburg.
Credits
Acting: Janosa Mike
Animation: Wassili Franko
Videomapping & effects: Kuno Seltmann
Dramaturgical consulting: Theresa George
Sound mixing: Kris @linear m/s
Sources
Video: Chapter 1: location Gare du Nord, Paris; Chapter 2: archive of the Yezidische Forum e.V. Oldenburg; Chapter 3: found footage (youtube, whatsapp, instagram)
Sound: Chapters 1, 3: original sound; Chapter 2: excerpt from Leyla Yenirce, 'Ava', 2019 (Xquisite Releases)Exhibitions
Digifem. Queer-feministische Positionen zur Überwindung des digitales Steinzeitalters, Kampnagel, Hamburg, 2019
Publications
ars viva 2023. Exhibition catalogue of the Goethe Institute Paris and Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2022, p. 85-89.
Exhibitions-
Leyla Yenirce
Core 30 October — 19 December 2026Explore -
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
External ExhibitionsLeyla Yenirce – Serê Çîya, 2026
47m Contemporary, Leipzig
Press-
The Berliner: "Berlin-Based Kurdish Artist Leyla Yenirce’s on Art as a Way to Process Violence"
Duncan Ballantyne-Way, 21 September 2026 -
der Freitag: "Leyla Yenirce im Berliner Konzerthaus: Wie laut ist ein Gemälde?"
Alicja Schindler, 5 September 2026 -
Ocula: "Make a Noise" (Leyla Yenirce)
Louise Benson, 19 July 2026 -
taz: "Auf den Schultern von Riesinnen" (Leyla Yenirce)
Alexander Diehl, 24 April 2026 -
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
Publications-
Leyla Yenirce
Werdegang, Anna Heinze und Juliane Peil, 2026 2026Hardcover, 41 pagesRead more
Publisher: Landesmuseum Oldenburg -
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
VideoLeyla Yenirce – SO MUCH ENERGY | Kunsthaus Hamburg, 2022
Leyla Yenirce on Holy Water | ars viva Preis 2023
Biography
Ph: Katja RugeBorn 1992 in Qubîn, Kurdistan
Lives and works in Berlin, GermanyLeyla Yenirce’s multidisciplinary practice is rooted in an extensive archive of films, photographs, and found images depicting forms of resistance and structures of power. Through sampling and layering, she recontextualizes these materials to bring seemingly opposing subjects into dialogue, from feminism and war to pop culture and political violence.
Currently, her work is included in the group exhibition Carrying at Museum Brandhorst, Munich (until 8 November). In 2026, she presented solo exhibitions at Landesmuseum Oldenburg; Institute for Contemporary Art & Transfer at Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg; 47m Contemporary, Leipzig; and participated in group exhibitions at Mudam Luxembourg and the Bienal del Agua, Cascais.
Yenirce has exhibited at Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury; NS Dokumentationszentrum, Munich; Kunstmuseum Magdeburg; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Deichtorhallen / Falckenberg Collection, Hamburg; Kunsthalle Münster; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; Halle für Kunst Lüneburg; among others. Yenirce is a recipient of the 2026 Finkenwerder Art Prize, the 2024 Berlin Art Prize, and the 2023 ars viva Prize. In 2024, Yenirce presented a performance at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.
She has also participated in various group exhibitions and festivals, including Moltkerei, Cologne; Studio Mondial, Berlin; Kampnagel, Hamburg; Kurdish Film Festival, Berlin; and Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg.
Yenirce’s work is held in the permanent collections of Mudam, Luxembourg; Detroit Institute of Arts Museum; Kunstmuseum Magdeburg; Landesmuseum Oldenburg; and Kistefos Museum, Norway.
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