Belonging Panels
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, at least, a small part of every day that I can remember thinking about, 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.
Previous panelists: traci akemi kato-kiriyama, Debbie Allen, LM, CPM, W.F. Umi Hsu, PhD, and Angela Waseskuk.
Nicole Rademacher, acogedor, acogedor space, Los Angeles, Belonging Panels, traci akemi kato-kiriyama, Debbie Allen, LM, CPM, W.F. Umi Hsu PhD, Angela Waseskuk.
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Belonging Panels
Belonging Panels, facilitated gathering at Acogedor. Photo by Michael Rippens. Courtesy of the artist.
Belonging Panels was a series of facilitated gatherings at Acogedor examining belonging through conversation, listening, writing, movement, and shared domestic rituals.
The first gathering grew from questions that emerged while making Gate Pass. During fieldwork in Kenya, access to domestic spaces became more conditional than I had expected, bringing security, intimacy, permission, and belonging into relation. The 2017 panel focused on belonging within domestic and familiar settings and brought together participants whose experiences complicated assumptions about home, family, identity, and place.
First Belonging Panels gathering, Acogedor, 2017, with remote participation via laptop. Courtesy of the artist.
Rather than seeking a shared definition of belonging, the gatherings placed different experiences beside one another without making them equivalent. As the series developed, research into multiple and overlapping forms of identification further complicated either/or models of group membership and belonging.
Later iterations expanded the form beyond panel conversation to include listening, writing, movement, tea, and other structured activities. Acogedor’s domestic setting was part of the work: blankets, food, children, remote participation, and informal seating altered the conditions under which people gathered and spoke.
Participants during a walking and listening activity at Acogedor. Photo by Michael Rippens. Courtesy of the artist.
Across the series, belonging remained contingent, multiple, and relational rather than something to be resolved into a single place or identity.
Tea and conversation during Belonging Panels at Acogedor. Photo by Michael Rippens. Courtesy of the artist.
