The Tipton Gallery is displaying “Adapted/Adopted,” an exhibit curated by Karlota I. Contreras-Koterbay that features Asian American women artists who use art to reinvestigate their coping strategies with transnational adoption or their adaptation techniques after the process of migration.

Photo of art at the “Adapted/Adopted” exhibit at Tipton Gallery. (Contributed/ETSU Slocumb Galleries)

“The exhibit is specifically about issues with Asian migrants and Asian adoptees. This is something that me as a migrant Asian woman felt connected with. We also had an adopted niece in my family and several students at ETSU that went through transnational adoption,” said Contreras-Koterbay when asked what sparked the idea for the exhibit.

Adaptation is considered as a rewriting of one’s self-narrative, a relocation of senses to one’s new environment and the redesign of the self to belong and engage to its new place. Adoption is a legal transfer of one’s identity to another, a realignment of status from one family to the other. Often, these immigrants, refugees and individuals crossing borders have to either adapt to their new environment or be adopted to establish a new life.

“’Adapted/Adopted’ became something as an entry point to understand some of the women’s journeys here and how they use art, their indigenous Asian ethnography and symbolisms to adapt to the new life in America or create their own hybrid identity. They also explore issues around that adaption/adoption life,” said Contreras-Koterbay.

The exhibit is part of a series on BIPOC, black indigenous people of color, in which the art focuses on nouns such as migrant, refugee, adoptee and stolen generation to depict the experiences of place, identity and belonging. One artist featured, ETSU alumna Brooke Hornberger, spoke creatively about her experience with feeling ‘in-between.’ As an Asian adoptee, she was adopted into a Caucasian family and felt that she couldn’t fit in because she was not Caucasian and didn’t feel as though she could be classified as fully Asian.

“Adapted/Adopted” is on display through Nov. 21 and is available by appointment or from 5-7 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays.

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