Nathalie Cho




décembre 2007  The pros and cons of International adoption : Roots of discontent (Hong Kong)



by Wency Leung
Review Asia Magazine, December 2007 (p.57-)

As a child, Mihee-Nathalie Lmeoine was skeptical when her adoptive Belgian parents explained that she and her siblings were from South Korea. "We thought they were lying... because we didn't know it was a real country until they showed it to us on a map," Lemoine said, adding that even then, the idea of originating from Korea was too abstract for them to comprehend. "It was only when we were adults that we really believed we were from there."
Lemoine, 39, was about 18 months old when she was put on a plane from Korea to Belgium in 1969. There, she was raised by Caucasian parents who also adopted three other, unrelated Korean children.
Lemoine, who is now an artist living in Montreal, Canada, said it took her a long time to become comfortable with her ethnicity.
"For me, I was not very proud of being an Asian," she says.
But having spent 13 years in South Korea and having met her birth family, she has since come to terms with her heritage.
A generation of children who were adopted from Asia into Western families following the Korean and Vietnam wars has enterred adulthood. And many are returning to their birth countries to discover their roots and to establish cultural connexions.
Some adoptees have set up organizations to share their experiences and help each other find their birth families. Meanwhile, some groups are challenging the practiice of international, transracial adoptions.
...
Modern Challenges
In Lemoine's case, she struggled not only with schoolyard taunts about being a "gook", she was also confused by her own adoptive parent's attitudes towards other racial minorities.
Although their comments were not aimed at their Korean children, "they would say, ' Oh, the Chinese, they so... ,' and stuff like that, Lemoine says. ""It's like a lot of adoptive parents, even though they adopt [children of a different race], it doesn't mean they're not racist."
Lemoine says that while her Asian background troubled her, one source of comfort was that she and her siblings were not as poorly regarded in Belgium. "So in that matter, we thought we were not worst race in the world," she says, noting that children adopted these days face much less blatant racism as adoptees of her generation.

Personal decision
Lemoine was the only one out of the four adopted children in her family to feel compelled to do so. In 1991, she traveled to South Korea for the first time. With French as first language, Lemoine spoke no Korean and little English at the time. Yet, with the help of Korean-speaking friends, she set on by examining adoption records, visiting orphanages and police stations. soon, she discovered a couple of startling facts.
First, she was actually three years younger tha her officially record age. She also found that she was of mixed-race-her mother was Korean and her faher was Japanese.
'What they say in the [adoption] file its' a lot of lies," she says.
Once she retraced ther origins, Lemoine appeared on Korean television to reach on to her biological parents. A friend of her birth mother saw her on the program, and made the connection. Lemoine says her first meeting with her birth mother were both awkward and emotional.
"When I saw her, I kind f knew it was her, even [though] nobody told me," she says. "When they introduced me, it was like there was nothing really to say because I couldn't speak [the same language], but looked at her a lot and she looked at me.

Finding answers
As her friends helped translate, Lemoine's mother revealed she was 16 and unwed when she became pregnant. She opted to carry out her pregnancy in secrecy, hoping to give birth to a son.
"If I were a boy, they would have kept me because there's no male in the family," Lemoine says.
She says she was glad to finally receive some answers, and appreciated that her birth mother agreed to see her. But their relationship never developed far beyond that initial meeting.
Lemoine says she later relocated to Korea and lived there for 13 years. During that time, she saw her birth mother only two more times. As a gay woman, Lemoine says she felt her birth mother would not understand her sexual orientation.
"She has her life and I have mine," she says. "I didn't want to change my life for her and I don't think she has to change her life for me. I felt we met, we understand what happened. She knows I'm alive, I'm happy."
Lemoine says she never felt her biological mother would replace her adoptive one. But even so, she and her adoptive mother were estranged for many years. She is only now in the process of reconnecting with her adoptive family.
"My [adoptive] mother, when I was a child, always told me she would help me [find my biological parents] but in fact when it happened, she never helped me," she says.
Her own experience have left her with a conflicted view about overseas adoption. She is an adoptee activist and co-founder of Global Overseas Adoptees' Link (G.O.A'L), an organization that hels adoptees locate their birth families.
Lemoine says she understands how overseas adoption secured homes for the thousands of babies left orphaned or abandoned in the 50s and 60s, following the Korean War. But international adoption has become an industry, she says.
By the 80s, South Korea was still sending thousands of babies abroad each year. Of the hundreds of adoptees she has helped, Lemoine says only about 30% found they had came from poor families.

Social stigma
Contrary to common assumption in the West, many women do not give up their children out of poverty, but because of social stigma, or superstitions, she says. Her own birth mother was not poor, she was young and unwed.
"I think if the Western world doesn't ask for many Oriental babies, it wouldn't be as possible to have [them]," Lemoine says. "It's like trading."
Since adoption agencies and adoptive parents are now more aware they need to help children bridge the cultural divide, some of the challenges Lemoine faced no longer apply today, she says.
But, she adds, source countries need to put more effort into lifting the social stigma and providing support for unwed mothers to keep their children within their culture.



31 juillet 2007  Globe & Mail : Unearthing the roots of adoption (Canada)

By Adriana Barton
31st July, 2007, Globe & Mail

Unearthing the roots of adoption
Agencies are retooling their support programs as a generation of Asian adoptees seeks to reclaim their neglected heritage
Finding the missing link

For adult adoptees, finding birth parents in Asia is a huge challenge, since most adoption agencies guard their records closely.

Jennifer Jin Brower of Seattle tried to locate her birth parents in South Korea last year. She had her DNA tested and appeared on reality television shows and in the press to publicize her search, but to no avail. The experience made her feel "very vulnerable," she says, "because I was in a foreign country and barely knew the language."

Others have had more luck. Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine, a Korean adoptee based in Montreal, succeeded in finding her birth mother in 1991. Although she hasn't kept in touch with her - "I think I remind her of the bad," she says - Ms. Lemoine developed a relationship with her biological grandmother and lived in South Korea for 13 years.

While there, Ms. Lemoine co-founded Global Overseas Adoptees' Link, an organization that helps others find their birth families and adjust to living and working in the country. Returning adoptees needn't feel alone, she says.

My home and native land
Top 10 countries for international adoption in Canada by number of adoptees. About 2,000 children are adopted from other countries each year; the rate has been relatively stable for the past decade.

2003 2004 2005
U. S . 74 79 102
UKRAINE 23 16 39
RUSSIA 92 106 88
SOUTH KOREA 73 97 97
CHINA 1,112 1,001 973
TAIWAN 26 15 30
PHILIPPINES 58 62 70
INDIA 10 37 41
ETHIOPIA 14 34 31
HAITI 150 159 115
SOURCE: ADOPTION COUNCIL OF CANADA





23 janvier, 2005  Cross-cultural Seoul searching to find a place to call home (Hong Kong)



By Clarence Tsui
Sunday Morning Post, The Review | Arts , Sunday Jan. 23rd, 2005

A group of South Koreans raised abroad are using art to question our perception of identity and belonging in a powerful new exhibition.

“Korea is known as the hermit kingdom,” says Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine. “Koreans are very nationalistic. If you don’t fit in with what they have in mind of being Korean they often treat you even worse than a foreigner.”
For some people, such words probably amount to orientalist bigotry. But Lemoine is no cheerleader for small-minded right-wingers. Born Cho Mihee, she is a Korean-born Belgium-bred and now a Seoul-based multimedia artist and activist for the rights of her fellow Overseas adopted Koreans. Theses “Oaks”, as they call themselves, were sent to foster parents in Europe and the U.S. in the 60s and 70s, and are now back to Korea looking for their biological relations.
What fuels Lemoine’s ire was the ill-treatment se endured on her return to her birthplace – something she never experienced in Belgium. “There was no support to help adult adoptees ro search [for their biological parents], she says. “The attitudes of adoption agencies and social workers were and are very rude, discouraging and disrespecting.
It’s emotional abuse. And it’s the reason she established an adoptees’ rights group in Korea. “It was for a year,” she says. “And I’m still here. Adoptees are immigrants without roots and connection.”
“Over the past decade I spent in Korea, I can see that, after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) crisis, Korea welcomed adoptees more than before – hoping somehow [we could use] our western knowledge to overcome the country’s economic [problems]. But it’s for immigrant children who could speak Korean and English and have a sense of Korean etiquettes – and not adoptees who are useless foreigners with Asian faces.
Lemoine’s art challenges perceptions of national identity, too. Defined by a Korean heritage and a Belgian upbringing, she confronts fantasies about Asians in the west and also Korean constraints – the “oriental” and the nationalist idea of “identity”.
Combining the two terms, lemoine came up with the term Orientity – the name for a group exhibition at the Hong Kong Fringe Club that aims to subvert the meaning of “Korean-ness.” through the work of seven European, American and Japanese artists with Korean ancestry.
Ethnic roots are the only tie unifying this disparate group of installation artists, fabric designers, photographers and filmmakers. Among them are emigres, adoptees, and second generation Korean-Americans. Divers cultural influences define their works, but there’s none of the clichéd, kitschy mix of western aesthetics and eastern spirituality that many still expect of mixed cultural artists. Instead, their work questions the notion of identity – and whether certain characteristics are biological.
The most vociferous of the artists involved, Lemoine – who initiated the first run of Orientity in Kyoto in September with Korean-Japanese fabric designer Oh Haji – also presents the most provocative work in the exhibition. “Today I feel” is an installation of 30 wall posters, each containing a square of reflective material pasted in the middle, with the words “Today I Feel” on top and an emotion or a social identity at the bottom.
Walking through the mirror-like array, viewers will see their reflections framed by proclamations about feeling “creative”, “Asian-American” or “Straight”. The humorous suggestion that you can position yourself as something different every day – whether it’s in sentiment, race or sexuality – is a statement about volatility of one’s being.
“It’s flid and multiple,” says Lemoine. “People tend to reduce and accept just what they want to see in a situation, It will be interesting to see the reaction of the visitors.”
…
Hong Kong seems obsessed with superficial facets of Korean culture, which accounts for yesterday’s two seminars about the allure stars at the City Fringe Festival. Orientity, also part of the festival, offers a more thoughtful take on the country. “The artist drawns from his or her entire life experience,” says Long. “And that includes being Korean, being overseas and wondering who we really are.”





2004 Winter  Zenya (Japan)



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Août 2004  Adoptee art speaks of motherland (South Korea)



By Lee Chae-eun
Korea Herald, Aug.9, 2004, p.11

Overseas Korean adoptee artists have return to their roots to discuss their mother country by birth, but at the same time the country that abandoned them.
The exhibit , “Our Adoptee, Our Alien” at the Dongsang-Bang Gallery and the Keumsan Gallery has on display about 40 works by 11 artists. In addition to the paintings, drawings, photography, film and documentaries by adoptees, there is an open participation program titled “Draw our mind,” featuring personal messages posted to their native country by some 150 overseas adoptees.ç
…
“I wish you a beautiful life,” a text message by Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine, is one critique of what Korea has not given to its overseas adoptees – a sense of identity. “Sending children abroad for the benefit of their ‘well being’ does not always result in their ‘success’ as adults,” said Lemoine as she looks back on the haunting memories of fellow adoptees who committed suicide.
Lemoine who was adopted a Belgian family, was living for ten years. Her face is already familiar to many people as she has appeared in TV documentaries, movies and books concerning adoption.
…
The Overseas adoptee Korean (OAK) Artists Exhibition 2004 is a non-profit program organized jointly by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Kyunghee University and Visual Art Cap, a non-profit culture and art group.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of international adoption fro Korea…. More than 200,000 Koreans have been adopted I the United States and Europe. Around 2,200 babies annually continue to be adopted overseas.





Août 2004  Chsoun Ilbo :



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Août 2003  Human Seoul : Portrait of an Artist as an Activist (South Korea)



Seoul Travel Magazine
by Helen E. Song



23-24 juin 2002  La quête d’identité d’une “Coréenne de nulle part” (France)



Soleil-Levant et Matin-Calme
Par PHILIPPE PONS

La quête d’identité d’une “Coréenne de nulle part”

Mihee Cho ou Nathalie Lemoine ? Il a fallu dix ans à cette Coréenne de naissance, adoptée par une famille belge, pour résoudre le rebus de ses identities. Dix ans de “descente à la limite de mon être”, dit-elle. Pour calmer une rage au Coeur qui étouffait ses emotions, pour découvrir la tolerance et une certaine paix avec soi-même, pour accepter le déracinement. Un cheminement solitaire, douloureux, qui aujourd’hui s’épanouit dans la creation. Artiste peintre, exposant régulièrement en Corée, Mihee-Nathalie joue des symbols careens comme des techniques occidentale et asiatique, avec une désinvolture où la sensibilité se masque d’humour.
Le sourire reste nostalgique, mais l’amertume provocatrice d’autrefois (“Ma coréanité sent la frite et ma belgitude sent le Gimchi [chou fermenté]”) s’est estompée. Mihee pense tourner un film sur l’adoption: “Il ne s’agirait pas d’une histoire personnelle, mais de peindre ce par quoi nous passons, nous, les adoptés.” Pour Mihee, ce sera boucler la boucle, car tout pour elle a commence avec un autre film, Adoption, pour lequel elle remporta le prix du Festival du court-métrage video et Super * de Bruxelles en 1988 et qui a été sélectionné cette année par la Biennale de Gwnagju. Elle avait 20 ans.
Date de naissance fluctuante, souvenirs obsédants d’un marché au poisson – où peut-être elle avait été abndonnée – et le choc pour l’enfant de 2 ans qu’elle était de voir ces yeux bleus et ces boucles blondes à l’arrivée à l’aéroport de Bruxelles. Un an après avoir obtenu le prix, elle se rend à Séoul avec un groupe d’adoptés amréricains et européens invites par le gouvernement coréen. “Auparavant, lorsque je cherchais à me documenter, le Centre culturel coréen me fermait la porte au nez : “Vous n’avez rien à faire ici puisque vous n’êtes pas Coréenne.” Cette fois, j’étais un peu reconnue, alors on m’invitait…”, raconte-t-elle. Ce contact la bouleversa et, à son retour au plat pays, elle organisera la premiere association belge d’adoptés. Elle reviendra à Séeoul deux ans plus tard. Pour un an. Elle y est toujours.
La Corée n’est pas qu’un ays exportateur de biens : elle “exporte” aussi ses orphelins. Sur les 5,3 millions de Coéens vivant à l’étranger, 200 000 sont des enfants adoptés au cours des cinq dernières décennies. Après avoir légèrement baissé, le flux avait repris à la suite de la crise financière de 1997-1998 (le nombre des enfants parties à l’étranger à augmenter de 9,3% pour atteindre 2 250 sur 9 292 enfants abandonnés en 1998). Aujourd’hui, il s’est à nouveau ralenti.
Mihee fait partie de la première generation d’adoptés – celle de la décennie 1960-1970 – qui, tout en éprouvant une reconnaissance mitigée par les familles d’accueil, ont souffert de ne pas connaître la terre de leur naissance. “Avant de venir ici, j’étais une Coréenne de nulle part”, explique Mihee. Mais, une fois, sur place, tout n’a pas été facile. : “On veut être comme tout le monde. De prime abord, on passé inaperçu, mais, dès qu’on ouvre la bouche, on ne l’est plus parce que l’on parle mal la langue. On découvre le racisme aisatique. Pour les Coréens, on reste des enfants, et ce n’est pas facile de se faire accpeter comme adulte.”
…
Comme beaucoup d’adoptés Mihee s’est mise à la recherché de sa mère biologique, qu’elle a d’ailleurs retrouvée : “Nous n’avions pas grand chose à nous dire, mais au moins je savais.” Vivant d’exédients avant d’être reconnue en tant qu’artiste, Mihee organisa une association, Korean Overseas Adoptees (K.O.A.), pour venir en aide aux adoptés qui débarquent en Corée en quête de raciness et décrouvent qu’ils ne sont pas les bienvenus. Grâce à la pression de son association, ils peuvent désormais obtenir un visa de deux ans. Conjugant art et action sociale en faveur des adoptés, Mihee et Kate Hers ont constitué un réseau d’artistes de a diaspora coréenne, publié un annuaire illustré de leurs oeuvres, Overseas Korean Artists yearbook, et mis en place un webblog (www.myspace.com/nathalie_cho)
Pour Mihee, les questions acides s’estompes devant la reconnaissance d’un travail d’artiste aux multiples facettes. L’humour l’emporte désormais surl’ironie acerbe : au “Et toi, d’où es-tu ?”, une de ses peintures de 1992, répond sa récente exposition au centre culturel français de Séoul : “L’habit ne fait pas le moine”, images manipulées à partir d’un habit de moine decompose qui jouent sur son nom de famille belge.





11 juin 2002  Gay Exhibit in Seoul



Hangyeoleh Shinmun (Newspaper)
Women 21 section : Rainbow Exhibit



2001 April 13  Expat artists explore womanhood, subconscious in creative shows



By Kim Mi-hui
Korea Herald, p.10, April 13-20, 2001

The two most noticeable trends on the culture scene right now are the vitality of the movie industry and the “death” of fine arts. Art, in particular, has been a drab business sparked only with occasional big international shows, and solo exhibitions by local artists, for the most past, have been dull and familiar.
Two small art shows by foreign residents in Korea, however are about to add a bit of spice to the scene. Different from imported exhibitions in that the artists are familiar with the culture here and that their works reflect the fact in one way or another., these exhibits also offer fresh interpretations of Korea since they are explorations of what the artists have been seen or experienced living in this foreign country.
Multimedia artist Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine’s sixth solo show “Variation on womyn” at Samak Gallery Café near Insa-dong and Toomas Altnurme at Noksapyung Subway station.
Lemoine, Korean name Mihee Cho, is a Korean adoptee to Belgium who came here eight years ago to learn about her native country. She has made quite a name for herself already participating in social activities such as helping Korean adoptees to Europe fnd their biological families and helping to ease visa processes for all Korean-born adoptees.
Not surprisingly, her artworks reflect her deep interest in Korea, particularly its culture. She has previously dealt with hyperrealism, identity themes and calligraphy art.
My latest show is an experimental combination of calligraphy and questioning of language and communication. She offers 15 works that investigate the role of women by varying the typical symbols for women in the Asian society: Chinese character (yeo) and colors purple and gold, which represent woman and Asia, respectively.
“I basically put Chinese character for ‘woman’ in different situation by controlling colors and sizes, and try to make a statement about the various women issues,” Lemoine said, in an interview with Korea Herald.
“For example; the bold black Chinese character against light background represents a strong woman, two characters suggest lesbianism, the decorated character questions ‘what is a beautiful woman?’ ad the framed character show a woman confined to a role or a place, like house,” Lemoine explained.
The artist thought of the idea for the series while helping to organize the third Women’s Film Festival.
“I worked with the organizers for two months doing the subtitles for French films and such, and because many of the movies were feminist, they got me thinking about women and how they are represented in Asia. I thought it’d be an interesting experiment to put question language and communication y playing around with the Chinese characters and symbols usually associated with gender,” she said.
“ We don’t know how much about the art industry, but we do know that most of the galleries we’ve seen aren’t designed for people like us,” said Kim Kona, co-owner of the gallery. “We like art but prefer casual environments to the black-tie system prevalent today, so we just decided to start our own.”
The gallery’s first show is a solo exhibition by Belgian-Korean multimedia artist Cho Mihee, who explores feminist themes with post-modern calligraphy works. The relatively well-known artist was chosen as their guest as a publicity stunt or a sort, Kim Kona said.





Mai 1998  Working Woman Magazine (South Korea)







Juillet, 16, 1997  Korean-Belgian Adoptee Korea Herald :Explores Identity Thru Art



By Yoon Suh-Kyung
Korea Times, 1997 July 16th (South Korea)
Beauty – the spare black Chinese Ink strokes, brazenly, violate the delicate rice paper, slashing out the calligraphy ideogram. Underneath, a tenuous row of mini-ideograms are linked together by their tendrils, like dancing figures holding hands. Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine’s painting, “Mi-wo Serie #1” is an orientalized interpretation of Henri Matisse’s masterpiece, “The Dance.”
Like the other works in “Ugly Beauty,” Lemoine’s first solo exhibition, the black and white painting betrays the artist’s particular predicament – she straddles the chasm between East and west, carving out a world of unknowns. A Korean-Belgian adoptee, Lemoine’s experience with adoption is the inspiration of both her life and her art.
“In-between. That’s how adoptees feel. We’re always searching for a balance between two things. I use this tension to create my artwork, “ Lemoine explained in her lilting French-accented English. “But I’m not only an artist, I’m also an activist. There are so many of us and Koreans have to recognize and make a place for adoptees in this society.”
Founder and director of Korean Adoptees Overseas (K.O.A.) an organization that helps adoptees search for their birth mothers. Lemoine divides her time between her art and her activism; more often than not, the two overlap.
“Ugly Beauty,” her exhibit currently on display at the Munhwa Ilbo Gallery, is an example of how the two different strains of Lemoine’s life meld together ad soar.
It’s unmistakable – adoption and its emotional consequences are recurring themes of Lemoine’s paintings. Her most stirring work tackle basic identity issues that are all the more pressing for adoptees: Where do I come from? Who am I? What does my name mean? Who do I look like? Where do I belong?
Lemoine organized her 35 paintings to reflect her journey of personal discovery. “I arranged the exhibit so that it starts with the section ‘Back-grounds,’ the art I did when I was still I Belgium,” the artist said brushing her bleached orange bangs from her eyes, her pig tail bobbing. “The second section is ‘Identity and adoption,’ which begins with works I did when I first came to Korea in 1988(9). Then there is the pre-natal life section, which explores the origins of life and the exhibit ends by my time in Korea.
The journey leaves its mark on the paintings’ canvases – the artwork in each section look different. “Flemish landscape,” one of Lemoine’s first paintings completed in Brussels, is an abstract piece awash with muted whites and hints of blue and green.
“The New World,” the painting which kicks off the second section, marks a change. It lays bare the confusion and anxiety Lemoine felt after her first trip back to Korea. “I wasn’t very well when I did this,” she said, laughing. “It expresses my confused state of mind then, I think.”
The painting is also the first in which Lemoine plays stylistically with clash between East and West – “My concept is that the acrylic symbolizes the West and the Chinese ink is something I only started using after being in Korea so it's the East, I used both of them in this painting to express the two sides of me.” The effect is chaos and turmoil, the two media refusing to mix and clashing uneasily on one canvas.
The mood of the exhibit changes completely as it enters into the third and largest section, the pre-natal life paintings. Instead of the blackish shades and violent power that pervade the earlier paintings, these paintings of which “Fetus Trinity” is typical, are infused with pinks, purples and lighter blues, the gentle hues of infancy. Lemoine’s preoccupation with the myth of origins is not surprising given her adoption but her approach is.
“I wanted to express the lightness of being,” the artist said chuckling at her won spontaneous reference to Milan Kundera’s “deep” novel. Birth is usually such heavy subject and I wanted to show it in a lighter way, with humor.” The colors, though they are softer, are not less striking – “I used a lot of purples in this section because it symbolizes femininity and most of these paintings are also framed by color. Its like a womb.
But the most memorable paintings comprise the grand finale of “Ugly beauty,” the calligraphy section. The myth of origins, the mystery of language, the meeting of East and West and the meaning of beauty are all intelligently explored in these deceptively simple paintings.
The Mi-wo Series which gave its name to the exhibit as a whole is a part of this section. For Lemoine, notions of beauty are attached to her unknowable Korean heritage – “I started to think about beauty when at an early age, I understood the meaning of my adoptive Korean name. The Chinese character of Mi is Beauty. The second part is girl. The global meaning is Beautiful girl.”
Names are another motif that runs through Lemoine’s life and art. The artist has many names – Mihee Cho, Nathalie Lemoine, Kim Byul – for the painting is Kim Byul,” Lemoine explained. “Kim Byul is the name that my birth mother gave to me and the painting is a mirrored image of the name written in Korean. The fact that it is reversed shows the warping of my Korean identity.”
Lemoine uses an egg-shaped tao symbol as her personal motif. Its meaning also aptly explains the significance of her exhibit, “Ugly Beauty” – the middle of four hearts lies a truly Eastern mentality. Through art, we find a harmonious blend of the two.