Meryem Yildiz

Born in Montréal from a French-Canadian mother and a Turkish father, Meryem Yildiz was exposed to a variety of outlooks at a very young age, driving her to the diversity and malleability perspectives. Inspired by her inherent duality, she found ways to illustrate seemingly disparate situations or thoughts through photography. With a propensity for the subtle and the secret quite prevalent, she favours diptych allegories, hushed representations and coded discourses. 

As an autodidact, Meryem Yildiz's work arises essentially from a wise use of unconventional resources. Meeting moments, fleeting or fixed, she creates in the spaces that surround her, with a dSLR camera at the tip of her fingers, and a dark room of fine pixels before her very eyes. Essentially, she blends figurative and narrative dimensions to digital photography: mementos, hidden treasures, dusty mirrors, nonchalant cats, mason jars, pages lost and found – these serve as an example of key elements and layers incorporated to her pieces, all of which carefully weave a link between intent and final result.

Throughout the creative process and at the heart of her work, Meryem Yildiz never forgets cognition, whether hers or others, nor the messages the human mind wishes to express (or to suppress). It will thus not be entirely surprising to learn that she majored in psychology at McGill University and completed a graduate diploma in translation at Concordia University, both in Montreal, Canada, where she still resides.