9 November - 3 December 2022
FELTDARK

YASEMIN SABUNCU
I contain Multitudes

Chronic illness has meant Yasemin has spent a lot of time being chronically online. She was one of Australia’s first digital strategists and has worked in social media, app development, and in web3 for companies like Ethereum and STEPN. Seeing technology adapt from utopian ideals across the years she knows that technology can be a gift but also a weapon of control and manipulation. This work explores how the internet is shaping us through technologies like social media, algorithms, platform capitalism, the commodification of our identities, and our search for perfection. Selfie’s can be a tool for transformation and Yasemin has been taking selfie’s since the 90’s before the popularity of the internet and the rise of digital photography. She often uses herself in her works as when she was growing up the media of Australia was white washed and she wanted to see people like herself represented. She took back the power of the lens and created stories that she wanted to tell.

ARTIST BIO

Yasemin is a multidisciplinary creative who works as a writer, actress, artist, and comedian. A Flinders graduate with a double major in screen studies and theatre production(majoring in performance). She did Honours specialising in video and performance receiving first class honours. This piece was selected for the Helpmann Grad show, won a MUFF award, and it toured internationally representing Australian video art. Her video piece was about identity and the representation of Middle eastern and Muslim women as seen through Western ideals after the impact of Sep 11. Across her career Yasemin has created award winning short films, video art, live video installations at festivals like WOMAD and Splendour in the Grass. She studied long form Improv and sketch comedy on a diversity scholarship at the improv conspiracy in Melbourne. She went to LA to study sketch and improv at Groundlings, and UCB but her studies were cut short by COVID in 2020. Late in 2020 she was selected out of hundreds as an observer for Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s adaptation of her novel as a TV project. Also in 2020 Yasemin was also selected as a National Midsumma Pathways participant for LGBTQIA+ artists with a disability. In 2020 she won a SA COVID support Fringe grant to put on her successful one woman show ‘The illest’ about her journey with illness and disability. She has also received funding in 2021 and 2022 to develop and put on her show Sick Bitch for the Adelaide Fringe. This makes it 3 years of continuous support from the Adelaide Fringe.

She has since gotten selected for the MakeSpace residency at ActNow, and also been selected for FELTdark mentorship program in 2022.

Yasemin creates stories that uplift, engage and promote diversity in innovative ways. Her work explores ideas of belonging, identity, liminality, the environment, race, health, social media, and being “the other.”

She also co-created Adelaide’s first street art festival. Yasemin worked as a street artist, and workshop facilitator including Amnesty International, Art Gallery SA, & Footscray Arts centre.