Not Valid For Identification Purposes
Official website for artist Nicole Rademacher
Nicole Rademacher, Rademacher artist, Los Angeles, Chile, Barcelona, interdisciplinary, research-based, contemporary artist, conceptual artist, adoptee, adoptee voices, social practice artist, public practice artist, art therapy
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Not Valid For Identification Purposes

Not Valid For Identification Purposes suspended nearly invisibly against a white wall.

2024
Inkjet print on vellum, paperclip, monofilament
8.5 × 11 in.

Not Valid for Identification Purposes is an inkjet print on letter-sized vellum of a 2023 certified reproduction of my sealed Original Certificate of Live Birth, suspended from monofilament by a paperclip. Light passes through the document; air and passing bodies cause it to twist. The paperclip does not reliably hold the vellum.

 

I first requested the record from the State of Wisconsin in 2017. The process was unexpectedly straightforward. I stalled. Nearly six years later, I returned to the same email thread and completed the request. The certified reproduction arrived in June 2023.

 

The certificate names my biological mother, leaves the section for a husband or father blank, and gives me her surname. Across the document, a diagonal stamp reads NOT VALID FOR IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES.

 

The work holds these conditions together: an official record of a birth, a document withheld and later released, and a certificate that provides identifying information while declaring itself invalid for identification.

Viewer standing beside Not Valid for Identification Purposes, a letter-sized vellum document suspended from monofilament.
Not Valid for Identification Purposes suspended beneath a skylight in a gallery, with a white structural column at right.