ADOPTING BELINDA
Single channel video, 8:50 min. 2006
Adopting Belinda is a mock-documentary in which Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, a supposedly Asian-American couple in Minnesota are being interviewed by a Danish TV host for a series on Danish heritage. They talk about their experience having just adopted the girl Belinda. The only unusual factor about the situation is that the adoptive parents are of Asian descent and the child is a white girl from Denmark. Adopting Belinda employs humor, performativity, and strategic reversal in an attempt to counter and question how structures and discourses in society come to be perceived as neutral. By staging and reversing the racial “order” within transnational adoption, the video exposes some of the economic, racial, and cultural ideologies and stereotypes imbedded within the practice.
In 2015, a Jane Jin Kaisen made continuation of the story about the Andersons with the project Loving Belinda, adding to the fiction the videos Revisiting the Andersons (2015) and Loving Belinda (2015) as well as the color photograph The Andersons (2015) and the publication Loving Belinda (2015). In the new works, the Danish TV interviewer revisits the Andersons together with an adoption researcher to inquire about how the family has coped since they met nine years prior. In the Loving Belinda publication, the fictional universe is contextualized by conversations between the individuals involved in the project, whom in reality are all engaged in critical discourse on transnational adoption, anti-racism and whiteness in Scandinavia.
SEE ALSO
Installation view: The Nordic Model®, Malmö Konstmuseum, 2013
Video excerpt: Adopting Belinda
CREDITS: Concept, editing: Jane Jin Kaisen / Cast: Belinda: Elke Olaf Goll, Danish TV Host: Morten Goll, Mr. Anderson: Tobias Hübinette, Mrs Anderson: Jane Jin Kaisen / Camera: Tone Olaf Nielsen, Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld / Supported by: Kuratorisk Aktion, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, Sleipnir Travel Grant.