Opening Night – 'Somewhat Eternal' and 'Sisters of Lartelare'

Celebrate the opening of Justine Youssef's Somewhat Eternal, and the Kaurna Women's Art Collective’s Sisters of Lartelare exhibitions.

Welcome to Country and speeches start at 4:45pm.

This event is Auslan interpreted.

About Justine Youssef: Somewhat Eternal

Justine Youssef’s Somewhat Eternal is a multi-sensory installation, encompassing video, textiles, text, scent. Justine Youssef’s auto-ethnographic films and installations explore the impacts of displacement and prompt us to consider our complicity in creating it. Relationships to land and the endurance of rituals and beliefs are key ideas for the Darug/Sydney-based artist.

Somewhat Eternal is a multi-sensory installation, encompassing video, textiles, text, scent. The central work—a three-channel video shot in Lebanon—shows the artist’s aunt performing R’sasa, or molybdomancy, a traditional alchemic practice of clearing the evil eye. For generations, the artist’s family have used their knowledge of the local mountains and ecology to survive famine and military occupation and to heal everyday ailments and misfortunes.

From 1982 to 2000, parts of Lebanon were under Israeli occupation, and the lead used in R’sasa is often extracted from bullets still found in the region. Through this material connection, Youssef asks us to consider colonisation as a curse that inhabits and influences social and cultural life.

Throughout the installation, embroidered textiles are scented with plant hydrosols—aromatic waters produced by steam distillation of plants—using a process the artist inherited matrilineally. Here, Youssef has substituted commonly used plants with blessed milk thistle, burnet rose, damask rose, and Lebanese cedar, chosen for their complex relationships to land subjugation, occupation, and renewal.

Somewhat Eternal expands from familial narratives to consider broader social and political currents, revealing the connections between human displacement and ecology. Within these acts of ritual and preservation, now fragmented and altered across geographies, lies a belief in the alternatives they offer us.

Curated by Stella Rosa McDonald, Tulleah Pearce and Patrice Sharkey.

About Justine Youssef

Justine Youssef is a Darug/Sydney-based artist whose work uncovers links between family ritual, superstition, ecology, displacement, and settler relationships to land through scent, performance, video, and installation. Her work has been exhibited in the 2022 Hawai’i Triennale, and at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney (2022) and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2021). She was the 2019 recipient of the Copyright Agency’s John Fries Award.

About Kaurna Women's Art Collective: Sisters of Lartelare

Led by emerging Kaurna Leader Bonny Brodie with guidance from Aunty Margaret Brodie, this intergenerational project aims to open new understandings of Kaurna history, stories, and culture connected to Yartapuulti-Port Adelaide. Through focused activity, discussion, and skill sharing, this iteration will focus on understanding cultural practices from a range of First Nations female leaders whilst learning new skills in distilling scent from native plants.

This third iteration builds on foundational cultural mapping workshops, community events and public exhibitions, leading to their first institutional presentation at ACE. Sisters of Lartelare is grounded in care and respect focussing on the creation of a place-responsive artwork as a powerful interruption of colonial narrative and ensuring songlines and cultural practices are taught and shared for future generations.

Curated by Rayleen Forester. 

About The Kaurna Women’s Art Collective

The Kaurna Women’s Art Collective, established in 2022 brings together Aboriginal women connected to Yartapuulti-Port Adelaide. Now led by emerging Kaurna Leader Bonny Brodie, with guidance from Aunty Margaret Brodie, the collective is dedicated to celebrating and preserving Kaurna culture through creative projects.

Support

Somewhat Eternal is a co-commission by Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, the Institute of Modern Art, and UTS Gallery & Art Collection. It is supported by the Creative Australia’s Visual Arts and Crafts Strategy (VACS) Major Commissioning Projects fund and the Gordon Darling Foundation.

Sisters of Lartelare is supported by the South Australian Government through Arts South Australia and City of Adelaide. Project partner: Vitalstatistix

Image 1: Justine Youssef, Somewhat Eternal (2023), three channel video (still), 11 minutes. Courtesy the artist.

Image 2: Kaurna Womens Art Collective, Lartelare, detail of exhibition installation - Harts Mill, Port Adelaide, 2023. Courtesy the artists and OSCA.