Nermin Er

Nermin Er, born in Istanbul in 1972, lives and works in the city. She trained as a sculptor and works mainly in paper and ink. Her pieces range from wall reliefs and free-standing paper sculptures to scenes made of paper, light and shadow, as well as animation and video.

Before graduating, Er co-founded Anima, a stop-motion animation studio, and worked there until 2011. That background shapes how she handles light, shadow, movement and time. Her subjects include people, cities and nature, often rendered as silhouettes. In later work she builds small spaces on a surface by adding, removing or stacking fragments, around ideas of mass, accumulation and dispersion. Her series "Surfaces & Lines" (2026) combines paper with watercolour and watercolour pencil.

Er graduated in sculpture from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in 1995. She has shown with Galeri Nev İstanbul since 2004, with solo exhibitions including Days Heap Upon Us (2018) and And the Lights Go Up (2022). The Next Song, a survey of ten years of her work, opened in 2024 at the Nilüfer Municipality Meteor / Balat Cultural Center. Group shows include Istanbul Modern (2013), Pera Museum (2005) and NordArt 2023. In 2020 she held a six-month nGbK residency at ZK/U Berlin. Her work is in the collections of Arter, Baksı Museum and Müze Evliyagil.