This is the fourth conversation in Acogedor’s Invisibility(ies) conversation series. The series explores the idea of being invisible in society, family, the world. Each conversation will take place virtually via YouTube Livestream (https://bit.ly/acogedor-live)––that means that anyone interested in attending can connect from anywhere in the world with an (strong enough) internet connection.
Saturday, july 24, 2021 @ 1:00 Pm PDT / 4:00 pm EDT /9:00 pm BST
Saturday’s conversation will be with adoptees Marie Gardom, James Straker, Badly Licked Bear, and Kayla Tange. They will be exploring race, identity, trauma, and gender as it relates to being an adoptee. The conversation will be moderated by Acogedor founder and director, artist and adoptee Nicole Rademacher.
Kindly RSVP: https://bit.ly/3jRmGTN
participant bios
Marie Gardom
Marie is a Chinese Indian adoptee born in Malaysia and adopted to Britain. After leaving Malaysia, Marie grew up in Germany, Wales, Scotland and England and has now lived in London for over twenty years. She works as an Executive Coach while also working with ICAV (www.intercountryadopteevoices.com) as an Executive Director, blogger and UK representative. Marie is recently in reunion with her paternal birth family in Malaysia but at the time of writing has not yet met them in person due to the pandemic.
James Straker
James Straker was born in South Korea as Park Min Gyoo and adopted to the United States between the ages of 5 and 6 years old. It has taken James many decades of struggle, growth, and recovery to be able to understand and to speak about his experience as a transracial adoptee. Throughout his life there have been many milestones through trauma to authenticity, some of these milestones include time spent discerning a monastic vocation in a monastery, moving to South Korea for several years, marrying a Korean woman and having a family together. James and his family live in Arizona where he works and is active in the adoptee community and shares his experiences, writings, and sometimes music & art related to his adoptee experience and identity. He also hopes to launch Continua Magazine, to be centered around adoptee culture beginning in January of 2022. You can connect with James by following him on Instagram @the_ex_adoptee and @continua_mag.
Badly Licked Bear
Badly Licked Bear is or has been an arts administrator, community leader, writer, curator, student, artist, and educator. As an artist, their work exists within two circles – a performance practice of embodied discipline, BDSM, and Looney Tunes, and a subject-making practice concerned with survival in an age of (INSERT CRISIS HERE).
Kayla Tange
Kayla Tange is a Los Angeles based artist and producer who was born in South Korea and adopted by a Japanese American family. Her love for poetry and photography slowly progressed into a conceptual performance practice. Physical and psychic boundaries, sexuality and permanence are also recurring themes. She is the co-producer of Sacred Wounds, an online show focused around ritual, subverting cultural stereotypes and ancestral healing for Asian performers. Coupling her experiences, while recalibrating her own sexuality, the work is created to facilitate meaningful dialogue around our need for connection and belonging. Her work has been performed or exhibited at Human Resources, Highways Performance Space, REDCAT, Torrance Art Museum, Performance Studies International, Melbourne, OUTFEST and Asian Pacific Film Festival.
MODERATOR
Nicole Rademacher | website
Nicole Rademacher is an artist and an Art Therapist & Associate 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. She held an artist residency at La Cité Nationale des Arts and recently received an Artistic Community Engagement Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. Rademacher holds an MFA from Alfred University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a recent recipient of an MA in Marital & Family Therapy with specialization in the Marital & Family Therapy w/ specialization in Clinical Art Therapy from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She has collaborated and shown work widely both nationally & internationally.