ANAT BESPOKE :: AJUMMA [Ah-Joom-Mah] WELLBEING CLINIC

ANAT Bespoke :: AJUMMA [Ah-Joom-Mah] WELLBEING CLINIC is a participatory performance installation exploring the menopausal transition through women’s lived expertise, medical research, and the intersectional experiences of CripQueer diasporic women navigating menopause.

This ambitious new project by interdisciplinary artist Eugenie Lee involves several stages, beginning with deep, creative, collaborative research.

In partnership with ANAT, via our Bespoke program, Eugenie and her collaborators will create speculative social prescribing for women in menopausal transition. The project reframes menopause beyond the medicalised narrative of decay and stigma – ‘past biological usefulness as a woman’, ‘over the hill’ – proposing alternative matriarchal models of visibility and collective care.

EUGENIE LEE, Interdisciplinary Artist

+ JIN YIM, Cultural Dramaturg & Creative Producer

+ DR CAROLYN BERRYMAN, Adelaide University,
Senior Research Fellow, Pain and Musculoskeletal Titled Physiotherapist, College of Health

+ PROF MARK HUTCHINSON, Adelaide University,
Dean of Research, College of Health

+ DR JANE MISKOVIC-WHEATLEY, Sparkly Brains Psychology,
Director, Sparkly Brains Psychology; Clinical Director of The Gynaecology Research Centre at The Royal Women’s Hospital

+ DR JENNY BROMBERGER, Integrative Doctor

The cross-disciplinary artwork combines: 

1. Reclaiming ‘Ajumma’ – a Korean gender, class and age-related derogatory term to depict menopausal women as ‘no longer worthy of the male gaze’; ‘angry dumpy hags’
2. Examining the perceptions of Ajumma through Eugenie’s intersectional lens as a CripQueer Korean diasporic woman who is now an Ajumma
3. Women’s lived expertise
4. Science & mental health on menopause aligning with the Social Model of Disability
   

“Combining diverse expertise, I will create speculative social prescribing to reimagine what an alternative approach could look like — one where women’s menopause matters, and they feel seen, validated, and nurtured.” Eugenie Lee

Eugenie Lee is a CripQueer, autistic, Korean-Australian interdisciplinary artist. Her conceptual research explores reimagined antidotes to stigmatised human conditions with which she has intimate experience, such as persistent (chronic) pain, post-colonial medical misogyny, hidden disability, and diaspora.

She collaborates across the sciences, humanities, technologists, and lived-experience communities to create research-based participatory performances, installations, sculptures, and paintings. Her works were exhibited at AGNSW, Science Gallery Bengaluru, UNSW galleries, MOD., among others, and featured in The Guardian, Artlink, RealTime, The Australian, Routledge, The New York Times, ABC, and SBS Korean radio. Eugenie received grants and residencies from Creative Australia, Create NSW, Synapse (ANAT) and is a Creative Access consultant and Access Advisor for global organisations.

Eugenie, an ANAT alumnus, exemplifies the transformative potential of cross-disciplinary collaboration. Her participation in an ANAT Synapse residency in 2015 marked a pivotal moment, providing her first in-depth opportunity to work alongside scientists specialising in chronic pain research. The power of this collaboration Eugenie says “elevated her ideas and ambitions” —she began as a visual artist, and after two years emerged as an experimental, interdisciplinary practitioner.

Jin Yim is an independent producer and researcher based in South Korea, working across performance, theatre and multidisciplinary arts with a focus on public space and international mobility. Since 2010, she has produced, programmed and facilitated major festivals including Hi Seoul Festival, Ansan Street Arts Festival, ACC International Fringe, Gwacheon Festival and Pohang Festival. She has also held senior roles with Street Arts Market Seoul and the Performing Arts Market in Seoul (PAMS), leading international relations for the street arts sector and serving as Co-Associate Director in 2022. In 2019, Jin co-founded Project DARI, a collective supporting experimentation, connectivity and new ideas in arts in public spaces across Asia.

Dr Carolyn Berryman is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Allied Health and Human Performance, College of Health, Adelaide University, and an expert clinical physiotherapist specialising in persistent pain. Her research explores brain mechanisms, cognition and lived experience to optimise recovery outcomes. She completed her PhD in 2015 under the supervision of Prof G. Lorimer Moseley and Assoc Prof Tasha Stanton, with a meta-analysis from this period cited more than 400 times. As an NHMRC Peter Doherty Early Career Fellow (2017–2021) at The University of Adelaide, she developed expertise in brain imaging and stimulation. Her work spans neurophysiological mechanisms of chronic pain and improving care for adolescents, while she maintains clinical practice at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital multidisciplinary chronic pain service.

Professor Mark Hutchinson is Dean of Research (Health) within Research and Innovation at Adelaide University. An internationally recognised science leader, he leads the Neuroimmunopharmacology Laboratory in the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Science. His research on neuroimmune signalling and the objective measurement of pain has shifted understanding of chronic pain and addiction, progressing three medicines to clinical trials and generating significant commercial impact through spin-out companies.

Professor Hutchinson has secured more than $73 million in research funding and champions translation, consumer engagement and industry collaboration, including the “Bench to Boardroom” initiative. He currently serves on the Prime Minister’s National Science and Technology Council and the Australian Economic Accelerator Board, and is widely recognised for his scientific leadership and impact.

Dr Jane Miskovic-Wheatley is a clinical psychologist and researcher specialising in mental health care for the performing and creative arts. In private practice, she supports organisations including Arts on Tour NSW, Bell Shakespeare, Griffin Theatre and Performing Lines to strengthen wellbeing across the sector. With 20 years’ experience in clinical research, she specialises in eating disorders and is currently completing projects with the InsideOut Institute for Eating Disorders at the University of Sydney.

Alongside her clinical work, Dr Miskovic-Wheatley is a large-scale event specialist with 18 years’ experience in theatre and major ceremonies. She has designed and directed 19 Parades of Athletes, choreographed works involving up to 10,000 performers, and led large stadium-scale creative productions internationally.

Dr Jenny Bromberger is an integrative doctor and a lover of the arts. She has been a general practitioner for thirty years, with a long-standing focus on preventative medicine and nutrition. For many years she has cared for elderly patients in aged care facilities, ensuring they remain up to date with the management of chronic disease. More recently, she completed formal training with the leading tertiary institute for Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, the Australian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM).

ANAT Bespoke :: AJUMMA [Ah-Joom-Mah] WELLBEING CLINIC is supported by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) and the University of Melbourne, Adelaide University, and Sparkly Brains Psychology.

ANAT Bespoke

Previous Bespoke partners include:

South East Water and FB IDEAS worked with artist Yandell Walton, in 2025. ANAT Bespoke :: Re-cultivate reimagined our relationship with water through artistic inquiry and creative innovation, encouraging new ways of thinking about water systems, sustainability, and the future of urban environments.
READ Yandell’s creative research journal

Flinders University – Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts worked with Dr Sarah Neville, Eva Sifis and Associate Professor Belinda Lange in 2024. ANAT Bespoke :: Agiles was an artistic research project exploring virtual and augmented reality applications for mobility, balance and creativity, reconnecting participants with the joy of dancing.
READ Sarah’s creative research journal

Swinburne University worked with Dr Peter Morse and Professor Christopher Fluke in 2023. ANAT Bespoke :: Playable Earth explored new ways of visualising and interacting with satellite-originated Earth observation data and analytics through immersive and interactive environments. Using contemporary game development platforms, the project investigated how Earth observation data might be experienced in more intuitive, exploratory and engaging ways.
READ Peter’s creative research journal

SAHMRI The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute), who collaborated with ANAT in 2020 and 2021, when resident Dr Helen Pynor undertook collaborative research with Dr Jimmy Breen, leader of the SAHMRI Bioinformatics Platform. Helen and Jimmy explored ideas around the liminality of DNA once it leaves its originating body.
READ Helen’s creative research journal

CSIRO, who in 2019 hosted artists Carolynne Bourne, James Geurts and Chris Henschke at the CSIRO’s Advanced Manufacturing hub in Melbourne, supported by Creative Victoria.
READ Chris’s creative research journal

AWRI (The Australian Wine Research Institute), in 2019 the residency offered an artist the opportunity to work with the Institute’s Flavour Chemistry and Sensory Research teams. Artist Elizabeth Willing explored the synaesthetic harmony between the flavour of wines and the visual aesthetics of still and moving image.
READ Elizabeth’s creative research journal

ANAT is a global leader in brokering opportunities for artists to work with science and technology partners. We do this because we believe artists are essential to how we imagine and shape our future. If your organisation is interested in investing in the transformational nature of interdisciplinary collaboration, please get in touch [email protected]