After her early paintings influenced by Suprematism, Turkish artist Nil Yalter (born 1938) realized collages and montages, in which she integrated photos and drawings of laborers and migrants. These works, created in the '70s and documented here, place feminist issues and the theme of migration at the forefront.
The book Exile is a Hard Job: Walls brings together a comprehensive archive on the guerilla postering project which spread to 19 cities over 12 years by forging the collaboration of art institutions around the world. It includes photographs documenting the hanging, distribution, exhibition, wear and tear, transformation and disintegration processes of the posters-

Nil Yalter first realized Exile is a Hard Job: Walls in Spain in 2012 for her solo exhibition in Valencia. She recreated, as large-scale posters, the black and white photographs and drawings of a blue-colour worker family that she met in 1976 while creating the series “Immigrants”. Yalter put them up on the walls of Valencia and wrote with red paint in Spanish, “Exile is a Hard Job”; the last lines from Nazım Hikmet’s poem “from Sofia” (1957). This guerrilla gesture that takes Yalter’s artistic practice out of the bounds of art institutions, also gives visibility to daily struggles of immigrants that are often overlooked.
Her poster exhibition, that has been hung around the world, was subject to criticism. The poster writes ″Şu Gurbetlik Zor Zanaat Zor″ in Turkish which has been translated as ″Exile is hard work″, aims to raise awareness of the situation of people in exile. However, "gurbetlik" does not mean "exile", but rather someone living in a different country than their own.

Exile is a Hard Job: Walls was released in Venice in April 2024, coinciding with the opening of Yalter’s presentation at the main pavilion of the 60th Venice Biennial, where she also received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.