[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome.
Thank you for joining us at today's program
featuring artist, curator, and art therapist Nicole
Rademacher presented as part of the Wignall Museum's Home
Edition, a series of curated artists talks,
workshops, and discussions featuring
artists and cultural workers.
My name is Rebecca Trawick.
I'm the director and curator of the Wignall Museum.
The Wignall Museum is a teaching museum
and interdisciplinary art space that introduces Chaffey College
students, faculty, staff, and community members
to innovative contemporary art objects and ideas.
By fostering critical thinking, visual literacy, discourse,
and empathy, the museum seeks to enhance
the intellectual and cultural life of our community.
We want to take a moment to recognize that we are situated
on the Rancho Cucamonga campus of Chaffey College, which
resides on the traditional and unceded lands of the Tongva
people.
We offer our recognition and respect to the elders
both past, present, and future.
And hello.
My name is Roman Stollenwerk.
I'm assistant curator at the Wignall Museum.
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In a moment, Nicole will be presenting for about a half
an hour.
The remaining time will be available for questions
and discussion.
Thank you.
Thanks, Roman.
So today, we're pleased to introduce Nicole Rademacher.
Nicole is a Los Angeles-based artist and art
therapist and a marriage and family therapist.
The influence of her adoption and reunion
with her biological family feature prominently
in her studio practice, where she explores concepts
of intimacy, identity, and belonging through visual work,
as well as in community engagement works.
Rademacher holds an MFA from Alfred University and a BFA
from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
She recently completed her MA at LMU in the Marital and Family
Therapy program with specialization in clinical art
therapy.
Rademacher is the founder and director
of the intimate project space Acogedor, which translates
to "cozy" in English.
She has collaborated and shown work widely, both nationally
and internationally, and she is the recipient
of a number of artist residencies and grants.
I had the pleasure of participating
in a virtual workshop for adult adoptees
in the last year with Nicole that she developed
and facilitated, and it was really amazing.
So I'm delighted to welcome Nicole to the Wignall Museum
today to share with us.
Please join me in giving Nicole a warm virtual welcome.
Nicole, the platform is yours.
Thank you so much, Rebecca.
And thank you to Chaffey College and to Roman
and to everyone involved in the organization of this event.
I'm really excited to be here and share
some old work and some new work and talk
a little bit about my journey.
I am an artist.
I'm a reunited adoptee, as Rebecca also talked about,
and an art therapist.
Reunited adoptee means that I have reunited
with my biological family.
And in my case, my biological family is intact,
meaning that both of my biological parents
were married.
And so I also have two full younger brothers.
My adoption and reunion with my biological family
feature prominently in my studio practice,
where I explore concepts of intimacy, identity,
and belonging, as Rebecca had mentioned.
And I've collaborated and shown work nationally
and internationally on all six continents.
So I have the MFA and BFA.
And I'm an associate marriage and family therapist,
which means I've graduated and I'm on my way to licensure.
And I'm also an art therapist.
I'm going to share some selected video projects with you.
So as a multi-ethnic adoptee--
so my biological father is Mexican,
and my biological mother is Caucasian, from Milwaukee,
and my dad's from Monterrey, Mexico--
I've spent my life carefully observing family.
I consider material such as gesture, space,
and object cultural artifacts of communication.
In my practice, I use the relationship video
has to time in our experience of reality through imagery.
I personally gather footage, often
finding subjects during the process.
I then select visual components to activate,
meticulously manipulating the imagery
through stretching, compressing, juxtaposing, cutting,
and repeating.
I speculate on the meaning of ordinary movements,
proximity of family members, and relationships
with space and objects as a method
of describing alienation, belonging, intimacy,
and protection.
So You are a Perpetual Tourist was finished in 2008.
And so you'll notice, kind of, the antiquated size
of the video.
It's a series of 63 short and micro
experimental documentaries exploring
ideas of longing and distance between children
and adult family members in a public space
as expressed through gesture.
And I cite this as kind of the first body of work
where I'm really looking at that visual space between family
members and really thinking about how we interact
with people who are related to us
or who we're familiar with-- intimately familiar with.
The footage was gathered over four years in Tucson, Chicago,
New York, Panama Canal, Panama City Airport,
Valparaiso in Chile, Viña del Mar in Chile,
Mendozo in Argentina, and Buenos Aires and Miami.
So this is a documentation of the installation.
So it's single channel.
And here are some videos stills.
And then, I'm going to play this video, which was actually
featured in many different film festivals and video art
festivals.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[ENGINE RUMBLING]
[VOICES, TRAFFIC NOISES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [COUGHS]
[INAUDIBLE]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[END PLAYBACK]
The next piece I want to share is called Potential Spaces.
It's a projected video installation
investigating space between members of bicultural couples.
This footage was shot between 2010 and 2013.
They're artifacts-- I'm looking at the space as artifacts
of amalgamated personal culture, referencing the principle
of potential energy in physics.
Potential Spaces consider space as a field of action
while simultaneously making action possible.
So here's a video still.
And then I'm going to play some of this excerpt.
And the last video piece that I want to share with you
is called Gate Pass.
So it explores the correlations between--
or explored, I guess, I should have done past tense
with that--
correlations between private and public gestures
of familial protection as interpreted
through the fixture of home gates.
So I examined ideas of privacy and protection
through interviews and observations
of the people who lived behind or passed
through the gates in the central province of Kenya while
on a three-month residency there.
My research revealed a shared need for security
and the lengths we go to to achieve a sense of safety
and stability.
Gate Pass documents these impeding physical boundaries
through photography and video--
I'm just going to show the video portion--
exploring the daily occurrences both inside and outside
the gates while revealing connections
of intimacy and formality, alienation and belonging,
security and vulnerability.
So this was installed at LAX for about six months in 2017.
And one reason why I thought to have installed there
was to really create a dialogue with air travelers
about security measures as a collective component of the air
travel experience and encouraging reflection
on issues of trust and protection.
I have a feeling that if I had done this piece now,
after we're dealing with a lot of safety and protection
through the pandemic, that it would look quite different.
Here's the installation shot.
And I'll play a small excerpt.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[CHILDREN SHOUTING IN DISTANCE]
[BABY CRYING IN DISTANCE]
[END PLAYBACK]
And now, I want to share two different adoptee-focused
projects where it's less about me
kind of observing and understanding
how family members relate to one another and more about really
delving directly into the experience as an adoptee.
The first is called Origin Stories.
It's a community-based project explaining
concepts of identity, isolation, assimilation, difference,
and family.
The project documents a multi-year process
conducted with marginalized communities in Southern
California and Iowa.
Originally designed to empower adopted and fostered people
to record their unique histories,
this two-hour workshop invited participants
to work in groups to create a story using visual prompts.
The stories are shared with the entire cohort of participants.
Then, individually, each participant
created at least one card by their drawing, tracing,
a collage, or other two-dimensional way
that visually illustrates something
from the collective story, so a character, a plot,
a resolution, a problem along the way.
So they worked in groups and then worked individually.
So, as mentioned, the first workshops
were presented only to adoptees and fostered people.
I later expanded it to artists, particularly
female-identifying artists and artists who feel marginalized,
and then also to the general public.
Additionally, other workshops in Los Angeles,
I invited co-facilitators who were not adoptees
but told their own origin stories
as they related to social belonging that
may intersect with their social positions
in the society, so an immigrant identity, queer,
ethnic minority, et cetera.
The cards created in the workshop reflected not only
remembered and imagined pasts but also stories that
have been passed down in their birth,
adopted, or chosen families, stories
that have been whispered from one woman to another
and imagined futures.
Each card became part of another deck that was then printed
and used in future workshops.
So here is documentation of installation
of some of the cards.
So these are the original cards.
And then here are some examples of the different cards.
Some of these were made by foster or adoptees, and some
of them by general public or artists.
But they use lots of different ways of expression.
And then, here are some documentation
from the invited co-facilitators telling their own stories.
This is Chelo Montoya.
She is an artist and also organizer in Artivists
in the Los Angeles area.
Here are some of the groups of people
interpreting the stories.
They look like tarot cards or inspirational cards.
And here again, they've laid out the cards
and are creating the story together.
And here, they're making their cards.
And then, here is a picture of me
with Bitter Party, which was the last co-facilitator when
I did this at 18th Street.
And they're a ghost pop band.
So Being Adopted is a project, as it says, is ongoing.
I started it in 2019.
It asks the question, as an adult adoptee, what three words
would you choose to describe your experience, your adoption
experience?
And so I created this forum where people will go to.
Everything is confidential.
People put in a name if they want
or anonymous or however they want
to habit the data kind of mart,
And then, I would create these index cards with their names.
So like, this is Alison, Louise.
We also have Anonymous up here, Anonyme from France.
I asked what country they lived in,
just to get a little bit more demographics.
So, so far, I've had 239 people respond,
representing 16 countries and 352 distinct words used.
So this was launched in November of 2019,
and I actually just got a new response
like a week or something ago.
So they're trickling in now.
But in the beginning, there was a big push for it.
And then you can see the actual digital installation here.
So here's the index card that's then matched with the words
that she chose.
And you can see all of them.
Alone and lonely were big words that were used.
I think those were the biggest words that
were used, if I'm not mistaken, or the most represented,
I guess, would be a more appropriate term.
And then, I want to finish with Acogedor.
So as Rebecca mentioned, it means "cozy" in Spanish.
And it's an intimate project space.
It was originally in my front lawn.
But now, we've moved things online.
So we've done Belonging panels.
And then, this has started since COVID.
I added a home exhibition, and then I did these Invisibility
sessions.
So I'm still making artwork, but a lot of my work as an artist
has moved to community engagement in different ways.
So I launched Acogedor as an alternative project space
because I wanted to explore deeper--
and outside of myself and my own ideas--
notions of belonging as I had been examining them
in my art practice visually.
As an adopted person, I have spent a lot of time--
at least a small part of every day that I can remember--
thinking about and agonizing over my relationship
to belonging.
Do I belong?
Do I feel it?
What does that feel like?
Is it real?
In my many conversations with other adoptees,
I hear these questions reflected back to me.
I know in my heart that non-adopted persons also
feel this.
Through these panels on belonging,
I wanted to broaden my concept of belonging
as the adoptee experience.
I invited others whom I knew could speak to the entangled
emotions and complex experiences of belonging and not belonging.
So for the first belonging panel, I invited--
well, I'll just start with here.
She's Zoomed in-- or I guess she's Skyped in, this was
before Zoom was a big thing--
Angela Waseskuk.
She's a Korean-American transracial adoptee
in Iowa, also an artist.
And then we have Dr. Umi Hsu, who is an ethnomusicologist
and identifies as non-binary.
And then, we have Debbie Allen, who is a black midwife.
So we all discussed different ideas about belonging
and when we don't belong in these different spaces,
and particularly spaces that we should feel like we belong.
Next, we did belonging in tea, so
using tea as this idea in different cultures
where you come together, and you belong,
and you create community.
Hsu was there again, and they guided us
through a soundscape experience.
And then Trey.
They also had us do a writing reflection.
So then, after that, I took a break.
And I was about to do more programming,
but then the pandemic hit.
And it took me a couple months to realize, wait,
why am I not doing programming?
I can just do it online.
I have the website, and I have a facility with digital.
So I was interested in exploring the shifting nature of home
during the pandemic, and Acogedor invited submissions
from artists worldwide, across mediums.
So artists who identify as BIPOC or from historically
marginalized backgrounds were especially encouraged to apply.
All of the work in the exhibition
was created during the quarantine,
so since March 16, 2020.
And I believe I closed the open call the first week
of August 2020.
So each artist examined their relationship
to their abode, as well as the social isolation that ensued,
with being confined to their residences.
The lived experience of 42 artists spanning five countries
were chosen to show and explore the diverse experiences
that each of us was experiencing in this certainly
bizarre new world.
And so here, this was the first home page I made for--
well, I'll show you in a second.
I found four different themes that we worked for, especially
because there were so many different pieces.
And so this was an animation with the corona.
So that was our first home page for it.
So I had Little Gestures, which is this one.
So these pieces looked at gesture
in different ways about their relationship to their home.
And then, in this one, we looked at time,
so different ways of experiencing or thinking
about time.
And then, this is with Connections.
So how are we making connections in your home?
How are you making connections during the pandemic?
And then, the last one was the In-Between.
So these different spaces.
In addition to the exhibition, I also
programmed five different artist talks.
And I did them based on the themes.
So the first one is actually for Little Gestures.
And then there's one for Time, one for Connections,
and one for the In-Between.
So this was for Little Gestures.
We had four.
And then, there are also two ancillary events.
So these, they were durational performances.
So this, we had people sewing together.
And we kind of deejayed the sound
of the different sewing machines for about 15 minutes.
And then, this one, people stayed as still
as they could in their own spaces.
And again, we video deejayed it, as far as,
like, highlighting different people
and then zooming back out and showing everybody.
And then, as I had pretty good success
with the home exhibition, I wanted
to continue on the momentum.
And so I started programming these Invisibility
conversations, exploring the idea
of being invisible in society or in family and the world.
And it was really interesting for me
to curate the programming.
So I started doing it once a month.
And I did it right after the home exhibition.
So the first one was actually family and grief.
And then, we did mental health stigma and immigration.
And then lastly, in December, we did body and body image.
And I had programming actually scheduled all the way
through May, I believe, but I had to take a hiatus.
So it's really interesting.
It's funny because here, I'm looking at mental health
and stigma, when, actually, I wasn't paying attention
to my own mental health.
Because I have a diagnosis of bipolar, too.
And I ended up having a mixed episode
that stayed for a long time, probably
because of the pandemic.
And I knew that I couldn't really serve the community
or be with people fully if I wasn't able to be by myself
and be present and well.
So I took a hiatus.
And it looks like we're coming back
in July for another Invisibilities discussion.
And this discussion will actually be with adoptees.
So more to come on that.
And then, here is my information.
So my personal social media is @nicrrad, or @nicrrad.
And then, Acogedor is A-C-O-G-E-D-O-R.space.
And then, I also have one, which I'm not
doing very much right now, but I need to get back into.
It's @msnicole.arttherapy.
Any questions?
Thanks, Nicole.
Really appreciate you sharing about your practice with us.
I'd like to kick it off and just ask, I mean, obviously,
as an adult adoptee, adoption is a sort of interwoven
consideration throughout your practice,
something that you continually are sort of returning to,
or it's a subtext, in some cases.
Have you ever considered creating work
about your personal experience?
I think it's kind of a unique, interesting experience.
And if yes-- and you may not have-- but if yes, what
are some of the obstacles that make you take pause about doing
that kind of very inward-focused work?
It's hard.
I did do one.
And I actually have it right here.
And now, I can't remember what these things are called.
But I worked with a friend of mine.
So here's a drawing of my biological family
about the same year that I was this age.
And so, if you flip it, then I kind of appear to be with them.
So I didn't end up doing any more of these
because it was hard to kind of match things up.
And it's mentally-- or emotionally,
I guess, more than mentally-- really difficult.
I'm trying to find my way back to it.
I feel like that's just a sketch for something.
Like, I thought it was a piece.
But in the end, I feel like-- especially now,
even showing it to you guys--
I feel like it's just a sketch for something.
I'm not sure what it is.
But yeah, and then there's this thing, as an adoptee,
of not wanting to--
especially because the family I grew up
with is very supportive, and it's a good story.
And the same with my biological family--
like, they're intact, and it's taken 16 years, but we're--
has it been 16? yeah, it's been 16 or something like that--
but we have a relationship.
And so I don't want to offend anybody.
You know, I'm a people pleaser because I'm an adoptee.
Yeah.
It makes me think of if you're an author,
and writing memoir can be really sticky.
Because you're not only writing about yourself,
you're writing about those closest to you, too.
Yeah.
And you want to make sure that you're treating them
with respect but, at the same time,
how are you then honest about your own experience?
Is someone going to get offended that I was really
hurt that they did this?
I know a lot of adoptees don't even
search until their adoptive parents have passed.
Right, yeah.
Interesting.
I also wanted to circle back to something.
I loved the concept of imagined futures
that you mentioned in the origin stories
and that being sort of a focal point of that project.
And I want to bring that back to our folks who
might watch this in the future, students who
are attending Chaffey, right?
They're all imagining their own futures, right?
They're all trying to visualize what that might look like.
Any advice for artists and creatives
who are trying to plan and imagine their own futures?
I know that's a big question.
Yeah, that's a huge question.
I'm like, God, I don't know.
Be honest with yourself.
I think that sometimes, I'm not honest with myself,
and then, it catches me later.
So I mean, I do need to follow my own advice.
And I mean, it sounds so great-- do what you love.
But at the same time, sometimes you
need to do something else, too, to make it harder
or push yourself, I guess, is more what I'm saying.
It isn't always about doing just, oh, I love this,
and this is amazing, and this really feeds me.
But challenge yourself.
Challenge yourself.
And what does that mean?
Are you only doing what you love because it's comfortable?
And I guess that goes back to my whole,
am I making work about my own personal experience
as an adoptee?
Am I not making work about my personal experience
as an adoptee because it's comfortable?
And it seems like you've been really busy
in your professional life and studio during the pandemic.
Where have you found your inspiration during this time?
Inspiration-- to keep going?
To not be--
I feel like I'm on the right path.
I feel like I'm doing something.
And with everything that happened with the home
exhibition and really getting a good reception from that, that
really showed me that I need to keep doing this,
that it's important work--
it's not just something that I'm doing--
that it's working within the social context.
So I think that's been inspiring to me,
working with all these different people
and knowing that we're doing this collaborative work
together that is going somewhere.
Yeah, I think working with others.
It's funny you say that I've been busy.
And I feel like I haven't.
But then, when I reflect back on, actually,
what the presentation was, I'm like, yeah,
I guess I have been busy.
And Nic, can I ask a little bit about that, about your hiatus?
I think there's been a larger discussion about mental health
during the pandemic, right, because so many people have
found themselves suffering, either in silence or along
with their loved ones.
And I know you mentioned an episode.
And so perhaps that's how you sort of
were jolted into the reality of your situation.
But I just wonder if you can talk about,
because so many of us are contending
with mental health, either personally
or within our relationships, can you
talk about how to keep yourself safe and healthy
or how to help your loved ones in these situations.
I mean, I've seen this a lot out there.
And I think it's really important is really
asking people how they're doing and waiting
for them to give you an answer.
And if they say, I'm OK, I'm fine, ask, what does that mean?
And as a therapist, that's what did.
It's like, how has your week been?
Oh, it's been OK.
OK, so on a scale of 1 to 10, where is OK,
and what does that mean?
Because we're used to, I think, before the pandemic,
we're used to, oh, I'm fine, and we just kind of let it go.
But now, we are, like you say, in this global collective of,
no, actually, we're not fine, and we need
to know how everybody's doing.
So I think what you're getting at is the stigma is low.
There isn't as much stigma as there used
to be around mental health.
And that's really amazing and important.
I mean, and check in with yourself, right?
How am I doing?
Scales are really great.
Therapists love scales, scaling questions.
[LAUGHING]
And make your own.
Use your calendar and make your own log of that
and see what's going on.
Yeah, I was jolted into it and realized what was going on.
And I still kind of resisted it while it was happening.
So bipolar is the dual, right?
For bipolar II, you're hypomanic.
So you're not saying you can jump and fly off of buildings
or things like that, but you're super motivated,
you're laser focused, you're super productive,
and you feel great.
And then, the lows are actually lower
than with bipolar I, the depression.
So bipolar II depression is actually quite lower.
And you can't-- everything-- brushing your teeth is hard.
So for me, when I was in the beginning of what ended up
being a mixed episode, with my hypomania, I was like, well,
I have to stay up until midnight because I
need to finish this project because I
was in school and doing this and doing that.
But after it, once I finish it, I'll be fine.
And then I'll just be--
but it didn't.
It pushed it, and it pushed it.
And my psychiatrist tried, but I was so resistant to that
that I made it worse on myself.
So also, as therapists, we always
look to the support system.
So when you've got somebody coming in,
and they're suffering, whether it's
anxiety or depression or anything else,
it's what is their support system?
Do they have people they can count on?
And hopefully, you do.
And make sure that, especially during this time,
that you're counting on them.
Great, thanks for that.
So Evelyn has a question.
She asked that I read it for her.
What is one of your favorite projects or pieces
you've ever done?
And what does your creative process look like?
How do you bring your ideas to life?
I think my favorite is the first one I showed you,
You are Perpetual Tourists.
And it is probably why I show it, too,
because it's one of my favorites.
It was so fun.
And it really evolved on its own.
I didn't, when I first started shooting in 2004,
I didn't know what I was shooting for.
And eventually, it kind of morphed itself into this.
And my process is pretty intuitive.
Sometimes it takes me a while to get started.
But I do writing.
I do free writes to get things out.
I've been doing a lot of that lately.
I haven't been making very much, like making making.
So yeah.
Oh, good, that answered your questions.
Thank you for that thumbs-up.
So I wanted to ask about Being Adopted.
One, is it ongoing?
Can people continue to participate in the future?
And then, two, I'm just curious how you connect with--
sometimes, you're really focusing
on very specific audiences or participant groups.
How are you finding those folks?
Yes, it's still ongoing.
I haven't done the big push for it
that I did when I first started.
I believe I-- yeah, 2019.
That's what I said.
Ha ha.
I didn't look at the data until early 2020.
That's why I got a little confused.
But yeah, so Being Adopted is still ongoing.
I can find the link and put it up.
You can also go to it on my website.
I have done a lot of work in communications,
in particular in digital communications.
And so I've done social media pushes,
also cultivating relationships digitally to then do
specific email asks for people who
have audiences to push it out.
It's that kind of social media, digital savvy that I
learned along the way as an artist
and working in communications.
And also, to be clear, when you want a specific audience,
to be clear of, specifically, who you want.
Do you have any additional ongoing projects
or future projects, anything you're excited about?
Or things are, we hope, changing--
I know, right?
Are you not in a phase, mentally,
where you want to plan?
But is there anything you're working on
now or hoping to be working on that you're
comfortable sharing?
I'm having a hard time in the studio right now,
so I want to be honest about that.
But there is a project that's been on the back burner
that I'm trying to reopen, which is a short film.
My husband's a filmmaker, an emerging filmmaker,
so I'm working with him on it.
I'm trying to write the scripts about a girl who
gets pregnant and ends up relinquishing her child,
so looking at it not from the adoptee perspective
but from the birth mother perspective
and looking at the crossover of those experiences.
Because my experience as an adoptee
and my mother's experience as a birth mother,
our experiences are not in the normal narrative
of the adoption story.
It's all about the adoptive parents and being adopted.
And so our stories aren't told that very often.
So I want to do that and then see maybe
that leads to a feature.
But let's just do the short first.
So one final question before we close out.
I just wanted to ask, are there any artists, or an artist,
whose work that is really inspiring
you whose work you'd like to amplify and share
with our audience?
Gala Porras-Kim, her work.
She's getting a lot of recognition right now,
but her work is so poetic.
And I think Carmen Argote, her work
is also-- it's very honest.
Carmen's work is very honest, and Gala's work
is really poetic.
And they're LA-based artists.
Huge thanks to you, Nicole.
Thanks so much for your time and generosity today.
Fun to spend time with you and learn
more about your practice and your professional life,
as well.
So Roman just put a quick link in the chat about the survey.
We'd appreciate it if you'd take two minutes to complete that.
So thanks again, Nicole.
We appreciate you.
And thanks to everyone who attended today.
And we'll see you next time.
Thank you guys, and thank you, everyone, for coming.
Bye.
Thanks.
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