Relationships to land and the endurance of ritual and belief are central to the work of Justine Youssef, whose auto-ethnographic films and installations reflect upon the impacts of displacement through forced migration, and consider our complicity in the reproduction of these conditions.
Supported by Creative Australia’s VACS Major Commissioning Fund and co-commissioned by UTS Gallery, the Institute of Modern Art and Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, Justine Youssef’s solo exhibition Somewhat Eternal (2023) takes form as a multi-sensory installation.
Drawing on familial narratives, Somewhat Eternal expands to consider how states of refuge can uphold cycles of dispossession. Through the maintenance and documentation of inherited practices, Youssef prompts a search for hope. Within acts of preservation, fragmented and altered across geographies, lies a belief in futurity and the alternatives it can offer us.
Publication
Somewhat Eternal is accompanied by a major publication documenting this landmark exhibition. The publication expands on Youssef’s investigations into relationships to land, dispossession, and enduring beliefs.
52 pages, 18.5 x 20 cm, softcover
Published by Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, the Institute of Modern Art and UTS Gallery.
$25. Enter your contact information and we will be in touch regarding delivery.
Three commissioned texts reflect on the solidarities and postcolonial discourse Youssef’s practice engages with. Latoya Rule—a Wiradjuri/Te Ātiawa, takatāpu/queer writer, poet, and campaigner—writes of solidarity between Aboriginal, Lebanese, and Palestinian communities in Australia. Filmmaker and writer Chi Tran considers Youssef’s metaphysical connections to the world as a form of resistance against colonial regimes. Mykaela Saunders—a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer and editor, teacher, and researcher—bridges the distances implicit in Youssef’s inheritances.
Somewhat Eternal shares affinities, affirms solidarities, and articulates the political and social relations between those whose own distinct lived experiences trace the global outlines of Youssef’s concerns.
About the artist
Justine Youssef’s work often begins with moments and places that reconfigure authoritative realities, most recently exhibiting With the toughest care, the most economical tenderness at the Hawai’i Triennial, O’ahu (2022); A Gateway or a Key at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney (2022) and Under the table I learnt how to feed you at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2022). She lives across Wangal and Dharug Countries in Sydney, Australia, where she was a Parramatta Artist Studios resident (2018-21) and a recipient of the Copyright Agency’s John Fries Award (2019).
Somewhat Eternal is a co-commission by Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, the Institute of Modern Art, and UTS Gallery & Art Collection. This project is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts' Visual Arts and Crafts Strategy (VACS) Major Commissioning Projects fund and by the Gordon Darling Foundation. The National Art School supports the practice of academic staff and is proud to support Justine Youssef’s exhibition as part of the Academic Staff Development Grant Program.
Related press
Art Guide Australia, Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
Justine Youssef evokes the scent of history.
Memo Review, Yuna Lee
11 November 2023