Five artists have formed a collective to help them cope with the phenomenon of being uprooted from their native culture by virtue of adoption—something partially familiar to this writer, being a first-generation immigrant. They call themselves The Adoptea. The Adoptea are working to change the “sugar-coated narrative of adoption.” In their pamphlet that accompanies the exhibition, the group states that they “encourage civically minded work through critical discussion and ask participants to think about and examine questions of belonging and the politics around adoption.” “Sarah Whythe—And the Spece Between” is just the kind of show for which the host venue, Chicago Art Department (CAD), is known.

        The first piece upon entering the front gallery of CAD is by Sarah Whythe, an interdisciplinary fiber artist and painter. Whythe is the co-curator of the show along with Maya Ortiz Saucedo. She grew up in Viginia and Texas before coming to Chicago to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago. Her work in this show focuses on the complex, and sometimes fraudulent, paperwork involved in adoptions from China. In Grain of Salt, she presents us with two vertical sets of shadow boxes filled with photos and documents, all encrusted with varying amounts of salt that obscures their contents. According to the paperwork in the shadow boxes, she was abandoned when she was two days old. At 21 months, she was adopted from Jiangxi Province, China, and brought to the United States. The sides of the cases are upholstered with fake Chinese silk, emphasizing the questionability of the contents inside. She states on her wall text: “What does it mean when you can’t even trust the paperwork that validated your existence within the system? Who are you? and who am I?”

        Solpheria presents us with about two dozen sketches held together with various tapes and stickers with images on them called The Self Is Constructed Not Found. The whole ensemble has the feeling of a teen girl’s bedroom decorated with sketches of Barbie-like idols, trinkets, and the occasional idyllic landscape. Embedded in this collection are little emojis and soft swirls that extend onto the wall. It is all very cute and adolescent. The pamphlet accompanying the show states that Solpheria is inspired from early internet culture, the Chicago DIY scene, and personal intersectional identities. They claim that the work is created “to serve as a focal point for self-reflection.” But that would be for a limited audience. To this octogenarian, it shows an adolescent female struggling to find their identity in a jumble of social media imagery. The work does not really reflect upon the unique struggles of being an adoptee.

        Jazmyn Yun Babler presents us with a video of a woman braiding her hair. Titled Self Organizing/Stuck in the Unknown, the piece indirectly addresses the theme of the show. The person doing the braiding is struggling to keep the individual bunches of hair together as the braid remains unfinished. The low resolution of the video, along with it being shown on an old CRT TV, enhances the struggle and the occasional tangle of hair that interferes with the braiding. This is a metaphorical interpretation of Whythe’s piece Grain of Salt and gives us a more emotional sense of the struggle and frustration of an East Asian adoptee.

        In her imagery, Quin Steinmetz takes a more direct approach to being an adoptee. In both Self Portrait and Buy a Baby, she bluntly depicts the corrupt, clinical, merchandising system of adoption from East Asian countries. On the wall text, she refers to the “red thread of fate” which comes from the Chinese proverb about the unbreakable red thread between two people fated to meet. It implies that: “In the American sense, the red thread connects the orphan child to a deeply footed, and unbreakable, thread that remains connected between the child and their birth mother forever, even if they never meet again.” Steinmetz’s images show just how brutal this can be. A self-taught painter, her less than perfect execution adds to the tension of content.

        Maya Ortiz Saucedo is the co-curator of this exhibition. Their installation, Sediment, consists of a video monitor laying on a bed of sand, all under a large plywood panel that is held up at an angle with cables from the ceiling. The video depicts Saucedo trying to upright the panel with her back. The angle at which it is displayed is the angle at which they were able to right it. The black and white painting on the panel, called Margin of Error, includes the words “Child in sta_e custody” and, beneath it, the same phrase written backwards along with other fragments of text. Behind the text, but in front of a man in the background, is a skeletal figure—not quite a body, not quite a skeleton–seemingly pulled up by a thin gnarled hand. This is perhaps the most powerful image in the show (along with Buy a Baby). Here we see the underworld-like, dark side of the adoption process. The video installation symbolizes Maya’s attempt to get out from under this shady process. But the painting is more powerful than the installation and could easily stand on its own.

        This exhibition is part of a popular trend that focuses on shows emphasizing social issues over aesthetics. It has a rather make-shift appearance brought about by unsophisticated facilities and the slight disrepair of the CAD space, along with the wide variety of technical skills of the participants. This further places the focus on content rather than aesthetics. It is hard to critique such a show; one is left to judge the skill at which the social issue is communicated/portrayed without judging the legitimacy of the issue. “And the Space Between” is mostly successful in its communication about being an adoptee. It could have been more successful if Babler’s and Solpheria’s works had more directly addressed the issue. Still, as a first-generation immigrant who had to adapt to a new culture at a young age, it was interesting to see how being an adoptee on top of being an immigrant greatly complicates matters. So, the show was educationally successful for me—and compatible with CAD’s mission.

Michel Ségard is the Editor in Chief of the New Art Examiner and a former adjunct assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been a published art critic for more than 45 years and is also the author of numerous exhibition catalog essays.