Nilbar Güreş (b. 1977, Istanbul) received her B.A. in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Marmara University and completed her M.A. in Painting and Graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, followed by further studies in Art and Textile Pedagogy at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.

Honoured with the Outstanding Artist Award for Photography and a Research Grant by the Austrian Ministry of Arts and Culture in 2023, Güreş has also been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Hilde Goldschmidt Prize (2013), the Otto Mauer Award (2014), the BC21 Art Award by Belvedere Contemporary (2015), the De’Longhi Art Projects Artist Award at the London Art Fair (2018), and the Prix Maud Mottier (2021). In 2012, supported by the Austrian Ministry of Arts and Culture, she participated in the International Studio & Curatorial Programme in New York as an artist-in-residence.

Her multidisciplinary practice encompasses photography, video, film, painting, performance, sculpture, installation, and mixed-media collages on fabric. Beginning from the personal and biographical, her works expand to address broader issues, with particular sensitivity to themes of social injustice, gender roles, and cultural identity codes. Through research, documentation, and the use of witty figurations, she poetically subverts conventions.

Nilbar Güreş currently lives and works in Naples, Vienna, and Istanbul.