ADOPTEEZINE9SEP ‘22FRIDAY
K-BOX TAKENIGHTOVER
This event is proudly brought to you by Malthouse Theatre and co-hosted by the Korean Australian Intercountry Adoptee Network (KAIAN) and Intercountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV), funded by Relationships Australia’s Intercountry Adoptee and Family Support Service (ICAFSS), Intercountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV), and International Social Services (ISS) Australia.
MEG LYNELLEJAIGABBYRYANJOELASOKAELLIEEBONYROSHANIO’SHEAHICKEYFREEMANDECARTERETGUSTAFSSONMALPASJARULONG 25221913119741517
FOREWORD
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Tonight is an opportunity to reflect the diversity of experience among the intercountry adoptee lived experience and to recognise our community of intercountry adoptee artists. We celebrate the K-BOX Adoptee Takeover Night at Malthouse Theatre with a performance of Ra Chapman’s play K-BOX in its premiere season, followed by an after party featuring Ryan Gustafsson, Meg O’Shea and Joel De Carteret. Together with this ZINE we present a small collection of work from Australian and New Zealand adoptee artists.
The journey of an intercountry adoptee can often be complex and challenging. Many of us struggle to articulate what it’s like. Writing a play is one way to express this journey and there are many other art forms equally as powerful. Art has the power to convey what can be difficult to express and our journeys all greatly vary, yet share many themes in common like racism, identity and belonging.
Meg O’Shea is an Ignatz award-nominated Korean adoptee comic maker, educator and researcher based in Sydney, Australia (Wangal Country).
O’SHEAMEG
She makes largely autobiographical and non-fiction work that has appeared in The Nib, The Lily, Liminal Magazine, The Comics Journal and anthologies including Comic Sans, Steady Diet, Threads That Connect Us and the Eisner award-winning Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment and Survival. She has exhibited comic, animation and film work internationally, taught comic making to university students, developed and delivered comics programs to high school-aged students from migrant and refugee backgrounds with STARTTS, and art programs to elementary-aged students in Korea.
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This zine has been curated by Ra Chapman & Lynelle Long.
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THERE WAS A GIRL
There was a lady, who had trouble having her own But she wanted so bad to have another baby So Sri lanka’s where she’d go
A new song would begin Funny how life unfolds, so it goes That what you lose, will be what you hold In your arms, once more There was a girl, she had music in her soul She took it back off the shelf and she dusted it off And she wrote this song
roshanimusic.com
It turned out alright
This is the story of 3 women: my Australian mum who adopted me, my Sri Lankan mother, and me.
One day she got a phone call From a man who said that he, had found a way to take her back To the village by the sea
Where there was a mother in a village by the sea Who had no hope or money To feed the mouth of her newborn They both put aside their fear for love
But one mother, now she watches from above There was a girl, she lost her mother young The light that used to guide now her was gone So she tried to move on She had a voice and music in her soul But she put it on the shelf, when grief took control Too many years gone She put out the flame that burned inside Then she turned away from life to hide From the pain, that was in in her eyes
Born in a musical family in Sri Lanka, at 6 weeks of age Roshani was given up for adoption and fate led her to the other side of the world where she had the opportunity to nurture her musical gift. With a voice that gives you goosebumps, she weaves song and story to uplift the soul using various instruments and pedals to create a truly unique experience.
ROSHANI
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Where she had a mother patiently waiting For 28 years to see her child again
IG: @ebony.hickey.7
On first glance, the brightly coloured cartoon-like form in this drawing recants an almost friendly narrative of adventure and exploration. But on closer look, the picture articulates a difficult and traumatic history. The Ansett plane taking off from Haiti illustrates the artist’s journey to Australia as an infant intercountry adoptee. Through this work, Hickey simultaneously signifies the magnitude of her journey.
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Ebony Hickey is a Haitian born, Australian contemporary artist with an interest in interrogating concepts of individuality, adoption, sexuality, queerness and black identity. Ebony draws on her life experience to inform the creation of her drawings and expressive sculptural forms, employing a diverse assortment of materials to compose her work. In 2000, Ebony created the drag personality Koko Mass. Koko challenges perceptions head on whilst also having fun with their audience.
Hickey uses these phrases to share the process of reconciliation with her past and her resilience to chart her own future. The artist also reclaims her lost ancestors: ‘my art is the connection to my DNA.’
HICKEYEBONY
Ellie Freeman has had many wildly different jobs in her life; currently she is a social media person who churns out tweets and TikToks. She’s written for the SBS, Peril Magazine, Pencilled In and Catapult, mostly about her experiences as a Korean-Australian adoptee. She’s also a part of the Korean Adoptees in Australia Network.
FREEMANELLIE
One day she asked ‘Do you know 2NE1?’ K-pop wasn’t as popular back then as it is today. I shook my head. Meena explained to me that they were a cool new girl group in Korea. She put one hand on her hip and waved her other hand from side to side, making a peace sign. ‘Eh eh eh, eh eh eh eh, twenty...’ – she put down one finger – ‘...one!’
Meena was the second Korean person I had ever met in my life and I feared that she would judge me for being adopted. But she just wanted to tell me everything about Korea. Meena wanted me to know that the trains and the internet are really fast, you can get a pair of glasses made real cheap, and the food is amazing. She also taught me how to say hello, you’re a bitch and do you want to die? Meena missed Korea. ‘You should go!’ she kept saying.
MEENA
IG: @irrellievancy | elliefreemankim.com
Meena was a tiny Korean woman in her 40s. Meena was not a quiet, submissive Asian woman. You could hear her laugh from the other side of the shop. She would loudly ask me and my friend Rosa about our dating lives by holding up a Lebanese cucumber, and a halved paw paw and asking ‘which one?’
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I was into punk bands back then and thought K-pop sounded stupid and embarrassing. But not long after my job at the fruit shop, I got a job working at a multilingual radio station and one day I had to edit the Korean show. And I heard it – the Korean women singing ‘twenty one!’. I thought of Meena dancing and waving her fingers at me. It sounded fun. They really did sound cool. And then I looked up every song they’d ever done. Since then, K-pop has exploded into the mainstream consciousness across the world and hundreds of groups have come and gone over the years.
But 2NE1 will always be my favourite.
In my early 20s, I worked part-time at a fruit and veg shop in inner city Brisbane. That’s where I met Meena.
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ASOKA
Asoka has always used art as a way of exploring her own emotions and has really enjoyed creativity from a young age. Asoka is inspired by a lot of art styles; whether it be bright & colourful, using textiles or upcycled materials, nature based or addressing social justice issues. As a Registered Art Therapist, Asoka is passionate about advocating that people have a voice and have a safe space to share, providing an opportunity to be supported and rediscover a sense of self, belonging and connection.
‘Cultural Tapestry’ represents bringing communities together. Each strand represents a person and is a part of the community. May each person be seen and heard.
IG: @asoka creative
JOEL CARTERETDE
Joel de Carteret is a passionate and talented artist in crafting film, photography and music into visual storytelling experiences. He travels the world in pursuit of human stories, filmmaking and speaking about his own extraordinary story as a Filipino boy at age 5 getting lost in the busy market in Manila. After being adopted at age 6 to an Australian family, 30 years later he returned to find answers to his past.
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Joel was searching for his biological mother at Manila’s biggest cemetery. Manila North Cemetery, Metro Manila, January 2017.
Joel grew up in Melbourne, studied dance and acting, currently lives in Newcastle, NSW and is working on his first feature documentary about finding his mother and the themes around identity and belonging.
Localsstoriesinmotion.com.aucapturedwhile
GUSTAFSSONRYAN
I saw my grandmother first. Turning the corner, walking up the stairs with a bent back. A car accident, I was later told. My birth mother followed. They brought flowers. They went to hand them to my partner. They had been expecting a daughter.
Ryan Gustafsson is a writer, researcher, and podcaster living on Wurundjeri land. Their most recent publication is ‘Whole Bodies,’ which appears in Liminal’s anthology Against Disappearance: Essays on Memory (Pantera Press, 2022). They are co-host of the Adopted Feels podcast and co-facilitator of the Korean Adoptee Adoption Research Network (KAARN).
I WANT TO WRITE HOW YOU’D TELL IT
| IG: @crewneckgreen
Searching and transitioning. They are not too different. Sometimes indistinguishable. They generate material culture, archives, keepsakes. A life sprawled across files and letters, multiple names and cancelled passports. Pink flowers, now pressed and framed, worlds from where they were grown and given. An expansive collection of hints, traces, losses, and longings. Even if these are collected and catalogued in our imaginations. Even if sometimes every thing is missing. Sometimes each missing thing tells us nothing, and sometimes it is everything we can hope to ryangustafsson.comknow.
We now live on different islands. My mother works at a coin noraebang, where people sing songs alone in little booths. She has two sons. I think about what it would have been like when her first son was born. To have one’s second-born assumed to be one’s first. If some secrets require lifelong Increasinglyguardianship.perceived
as an Asian man, I steadily disappear in Australia. I wonder if I will look like my brothers, who have no cause to wonder if they will look like me.
I am from a city I know next to nothing about. I went back once, in 2017, to find the maternity clinic listed in my file. By my luck, it was still there thirty-two years later – in the same building but shifted up a floor. To make room for a computer store. I was shown one handwritten line, buried in an old dusty notebook. A record of my birth. Written by the midwife who delivered me. I was born in the early hours of the morning. The name of my birth mother. Weight, in kilograms. The term primi. It was written by the woman standing in front of me, delicately holding the notebook open, saying I was the first to come back. I took a photograph. A record of a record.
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CHING CHONG — COVID
Often touted as a ‘harmless bit of fun’, this chant said by many of my school mates was a reminder that I did not belong, considered an outsider even though I was born here too. Words matter. The blue and white Chinese porcelain wares look strangely familiar. Look closely and you will see a range of creepy critters lurking. The background are pages of an old Chinese account book –highlighting the massive trade of blue and white wares from China to Europe and the western world.
EDITION
MALPASGABBY
Gabby challenges the centuries-old, colonialist genre of Chinoiserie with her own narrative as a Chinese adoptee raised by white parents in New Zealand, reclaiming her heritage later in life. The resulting works are beautiful, delicate but with stories that draw the viewer in for a closer look. This is a calculated contrast to the sometimes-confronting messages within her work.
Gabby Malpas is a graduate of the Otago Art School, Dunedin NZ with a major in ceramics 1986.
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A proud maximalist, Gabby currently resides in Sydney, Australia
‘Ching Chong’ the playground taunt that still haunts me to this day and was aimed at most kids of Asian descent in schools across Australia and New Zealand.
So I grew up with much confusion and self doubt, leading to low self esteem and anger.
ARE YOU SURE?
gabbymalpas.com | IG: @gabbymalpas
Please believe us.
Look closely at this image. At first glance it looks like an exotic tropical forest scene except the rosellas, elephant ears, passionfruit vines and spotted begonias can be found in many Australian backyards. It seems implausible yet here we are.
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Jai Jaru was adopted from Thailand to Australia in 1981 at 2 years and given a ‘white English name’. Their parents later divorced when Jai Jaru was 4 and they lived with their mother but continued to have access visits with their father, where they experience lots of abuse. Once Jai Jaru turned 18, they left home and started to make their own way and identity. In the last 5 years, Jai Jaru has been working on their photography and more recently, developing a podcast to have conversations that raise awareness around mental health, homelessness, women’s rights/equity, the environment, and other social justice issues.
Even if it is not your experience – why deny that it is mine?
Similarly, when I first reported the racial abuse I experienced upon starting school, I was not believed because it wasn’t experienced by my white parents, siblings or teachers. They said I must have imagined it. Nothing was said to the perpetrators and I was questioned, “Are you sure it happened?”
Through my own lived experience of homelessness and having experienced several mental health challenges in the past, I have become a passionate advocate for these issues. Along the journey of life, I have found gardening and photography to be especially therapeutic and become involved in many community groups both as a participant and volunteer and it is the very process of giving back and connecting to those who are going through the same experiences that I attribute some of my healing to. The process of photography has been a therapeutic experiential tool that I have discovered in my healing journey. It has been a way for me to practice mindfulness strategies such as being present in the moment and being grounded. And observing my surroundings to see beyond my immediate perspective. I have gone from participant to Director in the charity Homeless in Focus, which seeks to change lives and increase community connection through the empowerment of people affected by homelessness through photography and entrepreneurship.
This specific photograph was taken at the William Street stairs, just down from Kings Cross. It is late at night, and I am sitting nearby watching as the traffic goes by. I feel like this reflects the transient impermanent nature of seeking answers. Just as I find new information, solutions, reasoning, and answers – things change and I am presented with something else, something more.
CONSEQUENCES
homelessinfocus.com.au | IG: @zigi _ beating _ the _ blackdog TAKE OVER NIGHT 24K-BOX ADOPTEE ZINE 23
VONG PHOTOGRAPHYLONG
Lynelle Long was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia since 5 months old, adopted at 16 years of age to a Victorian dairy farming family in Gippsland. Lynelle is an avid photographer and writer.
To a land far away
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The storms have been fierce
VIETNAMESE CORACLE
This image was chosen out of her album from a return visit to her homeland in 2018. You can read about this and view the rest of the album intercountryadopteevoices.com/2018/03/25/return-to-birthlandat
Origins unknown
TW: @ICAV16 | intercountryadopteevoices.com
My resilient Vietnamese spirit
Returns to my homeland
No rudder to guide me
Amongst the tossing waves of life
My life fragile
Overcoming all odds
Sent adrift from my homeland
A survivor
digitalhouse.com.auandrew.muccio@ au>muccio@digitalhouse.com.<andrew. COVER ARTWORK BY MEG O’SHEA
