About the Art

Many adoptees of color in white families are often not centered in conversations about multiracial families, with narratives rarely told from the perspective of the adoptee. Adoptees of color have cited experiencing isolation from their cultural communities. As a result, they are left to navigate race, cultural and personal identity on their own. In this series, Zoe Watts, draws on images significant to their personal identity, their process of piecing their cultural identity together, and creating their representation in the form of architectural, metal structures. Watts draws from their own personal experience and also through a series of interviews they conducted with other Asian adoptees. Born from the accumulation of these perspectives and images of Chinese and American culture, the structures visually represent an individual who is simultaneously a part of a culture by definition and yet feels significantly separate from it.

Photo right - Courtesy of Zoe Watts