The sky broke when I was allowed to fly.

A solo exhibition by Nicole Rademacher

LA Artcore

May 15th - June 15th

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 16th

120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012

"The sky broke when I was allowed to fly" is a multimedia installation examining
transcultural/racial adoption, cultural displacement, and the complexities of claiming— rather than reclaiming—Mexican heritage as a Latinx adoptee who never had access to her birth culture growing up.

The exhibition features video, audio, ceramic, drawing, and resin-based works developed through multiple visits to Monterrey, Mexico, my birth father's hometown. The installations investigate how memory and identity form through both presence and absence, using fragmented materials and residual traces to mirror the incomplete information and imaginary lives and memories that often characterize adoptee experience. Working with natural materials collected in Monterrey alongside documentation of sky, water, and landscape, the work creates immersive environments that hold space for grief, transformation, and the ongoing process of cultural embodiment.

Rather than focusing on intended impressions or finished forms, the work emphasizes what remains—the negative space, the leftover material, the fragments—positioning these residues as primary subjects that speak to loss and the labor of piecing together fractured narratives.

The exhibition integrates museotherapy programming, a day-long (5-hour) art-based
healing workshop, that combines deep looking at artwork with reflective art-making. This workshop prioritizes adults disconnected from their ethnic or cultural heritage: adults who have been adopted, former foster youth, immigrants, and children of immigrants. Artwork created during the session will be incorporated into the exhibition, transforming it into a collaborative exploration of cultural identity and belonging.

This project positions transcultural and transracial adoption within broader
conversations about diaspora, colonialism, and cultural embodiment, offering both
personal narrative and collective space for healing.

Artist Bio + Statement

I was born to one set of parents and adopted by another. Growing up adopted from a
closed adoption, I lived in fantasies that were always plausible realities. This experience of relinquishment and later reunion with my biological family has become the nexus of my work as an artist and Board Certified Art Therapist.

My interdisciplinary practice explores cultural displacement, absence, and hybrid
identity through video, photography, collage, drawing, ceramics, installation, and
community art-making. I work intuitively and experimentally, letting process guide
material choices to reveal how personal narratives can hold space for collective healing. I'm drawn to materials that embody in-between states—vellum's translucency, fishing line's suspension, fragmented surfaces—the liminal spaces where adoptees and others displaced from their origins exist.

My community-engaged work creates room for others navigating similar terrain. "We
Are Not Our Cruxes" (2023-2024) centered adult adoptees and foster care alumni through art-based healing workshops, while "Being Adopted" (2020/2024) transformed responses from 252 adoptees in 16 countries into an immersive installation exploring fragmented identity.

In 2023, I developed a museotherapy pilot program for LACMA, later adapting it for the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art and most recently for a Getty Research Institute consortium seminar. The protocol moves from careful, mindful looking to body-based reflection to art-making, creating therapeutic experiences for individuals and communities. My training as an art therapist allows me to hold space for vulnerable emotional work while maintaining artistic rigor, bridging personal expression with broader social inquiry.