Image: Courtesy of the artist
August 4 - September 22, 2023
Exhibition opening: Friday, August 4, 5:30-7:30pm
The Exhibition Space, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta
Free entry, all welcome
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You can find Yasemin Sabuncu’s Alchemical in The Mill’s Exhibition Space,
located at 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta (Adelaide).The Exhibition Space is open Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm.
Accessibility
The Mill has two entrances, the main entrance on the corner of Angas and Gunson Street and an accessible entrance further down Angas Street.
Both doors are locked from the outside, there is a doorbell on the main door that will alert The Mill team. They will meet you at the accessible entrance to welcome you into the building.
The Mill has concrete flooring throughout with no internal steps and a disability toilet on site.
Read more in-depth information on our accessibility web page.
For SALA 2023, The Mill is excited to present Alchemical, a solo exhibition by multimedia artist Yasemin Sabuncu. This exhibition reclaims the artist's space and power as a creative who has had their career and life affected by late-stage diagnosis of endometriosis and ADHD. The works explore how to find safety, rest, home, and love in a body that is often labelled wrong or is causing pain and disability.
Yasemin Sabuncu is the recipient of the Mahmood Martin Foundation Sponsored Studio for the January-June residency in 2023.
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This exhibition explores the transformative power of chronic illness and how it can alchemise you into something unexpected, new, and uncharted. I wanted to show the shadow and light of the process of evolution I experienced trying to find healing, meaning, and answers to why I was feeling so out of sorts and being so sick I couldn’t work.
Through tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs, being bed bound, unable to work, countless hours of appointments, surgeries, invasive tests, waiting up to a year for certain appointments, and evaluations I finally found some answers. It took almost two decades for me to find this diagnosis. I was not alone with the length of diagnosis, Endometriosis which effects 1 in 9 people who were assigned female at birth, takes on average 10 years to diagnose which is not good enough.
The whole process had nearly broken me many times and I had to rely on my inner strength to survive and persevere with the uncertainty and my degrading health. Despite my best efforts I had slipped through the cracks of the medical system, and been living with undiagnosed endometriosis, adenomyosis, chronic fatigue syndrome/ME, and ADHD. It was a relief in some ways to find out what was ‘wrong’ with me, but then I had to let go of who I used to be and create a new life within the limitations of my conditions.
Luckily now with understanding of my body and finding suitable treatments and surgery I have been forever altered and beginning a new life initiated by the alchemical process of living with my conditions. The liminal space I endured birthed into something beautiful, at times terrifying, and ultimately life changing. It made me look deeper into my spirituality, consciousness, and deep investigation of life and the universe. This process is represented through the spectrum of colours, shapes, textures, biological and geological imagery, and various mediums to reflect on some of my experiences through this process.
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Yasemin Sabuncu is a multidisciplinary creative with a Turkish background who works as a writer, director, actress, artist and comedian. Studying a double major in screen and theatre production at Flinders University, she went on to study Honours specialising in video, digital technology and performance.
She also studied long-form improv and sketch comedy at the improv conspiracy in Melbourne, and at Groundlings and UCB in LA.
Yasemin aims to create stories that uplift, engage and promote diversity in innovative ways. Her work explores ideas of belonging, identity, liminality, spirituality, the environment, race, health and being “the other.”
Her work has been shown as part of ActNow Theatre’s digital residency in 2021 and FELTdark program 2022. She has also been a Midsumma Pathways participant,receiving mentorship from Victoria Falconer and Tj Dawe, Canada, for her 2021 Fringe show 'the Illest', with support from Adelaide Fringe Artist Fund. Recently, Yasemin created a mural for My Lover Cindi, supported by Adelaide Fringe Fund.
Photos: Daniel Marks