Adopted the Comic

I have been working as a freelance visual, media & community artist since leaving university in 2005. My academic achievements include a Masters in Media Arts with distinction and (BA) Photography with 2:1 at Manchester Met. University. I have also successfully attained a level 4 City & Guilds Media Techniques (Video production) with distinction. I am hoping to go on to a PhD in the future... we'll see =) I mainly work with digital video and photography, in which I explore my own experience of being transracially adopted. My practice has included national and international exhibitions/film screenings, public talks on adoption, art workshops as well as other design/photographic/website works. I have been lucky enough to be invited to speak about my adoption experience globally. Most of the talks have been for families that have adopted children, especially from East Asian countries. I have been whole-heartedly touched by how my talks have been received by families and the talks give me constant inspiration. I also recently became a member of Advisory Network of the Adopted Vietnamese International, a network run and for anyone contacted with adoption from Vietnam. It was only in my last year on my under grad. that i deiced to look into my adoption as part of my art. Before that i didnt feel that adoption was relevant to my life, of course now i feel different =P. I was born in 1982 in Hong Kong. My birth mother was a Vietnamese refugee boat-person that fled to Hong Kong after the Vietnam War. She was staying in a refugee camp when I was born. I was given up at birth. The social workers told my adopted parents she was very lucky to be given the chance to emigrate to America, for only a few refugees were given this opportunity. Also she already had a son when I was born. She felt that she couldn't go to a new country not knowing how to speak English as her first language while having very little money as well having a new born baby to top it all off. So I was lucky to be fostered straight away by a British family. My foster family gave me a nickname, Jessica Jane (JJ). After a year another British family who was living in Hong Kong at the time, the Emmett's, adopted me. From that day I was known as Jessica Jane Emmett. I lived in Hong Kong for sixteen years, and then emigrated to the UK with my adopted parents and my sister in 1998. Many people ask me if we left Hong Kong because of the handover but the actual reason is that my adopted parents had lived in Hong Kong for about 30 years and felt that they wanted to move back closer to relatives and live in their own homeland again. While living in HK I lived in very expatriate life, English speaking schools & friends etc. so i sadly can't speak Chinese. I really struggled when i first moved to the UK, but found my peace after meeting my now husband at the end of high school =). We studied and lived in Manchester, UK for 8 years. We recently moved to the north of Oxford =). If you'd like to see my other work you can find it at my online portfolio here: www.jessica-emmett.com There is also my Sock Bunny project that is about adoption you might want to see =): www.sockbunnies.com