Sümeyra Yüce, also known as Süm de la Creme, is a Turkish artist with formal academic training who works across digital and traditional mediums. Her practice draws on psychology, philosophy, mythology and archetypal symbolism, with animal and botanical motifs as recurring elements of her visual language.
In an interview, Yüce traced her practice to a serious accident she experienced in high school, after which much of her work grew out of existential fear. She approaches negative experiences as “spaces that hold freedom, transformation, and possibility”. She describes each of her pieces as beginning as “a thought equation already resolved” in her mind.In 2022, she was among several women artists brought into the NFT community La Créme De La Créme by its founder Basaia and other members, according to founding member Artwolf.
Her figures are rendered in a flat graphic style that draws on illustration, pop art, internet culture, tattoo imagery and fashion photography, with simplified perspective and bright colour. Some works move toward surrealism, though her protagonists mostly remain in recognisable everyday spaces such as living rooms and bathrooms. One recurring series depicts figures standing before paintings that function as separate characters within the composition. In Burning of Venice, a woman in a suit patterned with corn-dressed men stands before a painting of a blue horse, a candle burning on a table nearby. In I Would Not Have Been Born If I Knew, a young woman sits before an untouched cake as a scorpion wearing a red mask approaches.
