ADRIENNE NOELLE WERGE

risd connection: MFA in Photography

from: Vung Tau, Vietnam, via Indiana

the road to risd: With a personal history that reads like a novel — and may actually become one someday — Adrienne Noelle Werge has traveled an unconventional path to get to RISD. As an infant, she was adopted from an orphanage outside Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War and grew up near the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. An exhibition of D-Day photos she saw at age eight sparked a fascination with photography, and by her freshman year in high school she was processing her own film. After starting at Purdue as a design student, Adrienne swerved off the beaten path when she became pregnant and decided to raise the baby. “At that point I decided how to live my life — to not live foolishly,” she reflects. She worked full-time and attended classes at night, eventually transferring to Notre Dame and earning three degrees: BAs in French and Gender Studies and a BFA in Photography. Becoming “obsessed with getting into grad school,” she decided to try for RISD.

why risd? The quality of the faculty, particularly Photography professors Deborah Bright, Ann Fessler and Henry Horenstein ’71 PH/MFA ’73 PH, first drew Adrienne to RISD; when she was offered a President’s Scholarship — a highly competitive award for students from under-represented populations — her decision was clear. Now at the midpoint of the program, Adrienne feels that “the freedom” she has found here is “astounding — to be able to explore whatever compels me, by whatever means. When I first came here I felt so comfortable doing what I do best — photography — that I spent a year doing other things and not photographing. It was incredibly liberating to explore other media. I have always wanted to be an artist — one who is a hell of a good photographer — but most of all, an artist. Now I’m drawing on everything I have explored: printmaking, installation, sound, writing.”

creative interests: Several years ago Adrienne was given footage of the Vietnamese orphanage where she lived in 1972. Her current work stems from those images, exploring themes of rootlessness (lacking links to a past place or person); the “American dream” (the relative advantage of growing up in the US versus the difficulties of being a woman here); and identity as a commodity (being an infant who arrived with a receipt for “purchase”). As an undergraduate she explored “the insidiousness of fairy tales and their effect upon the female psyche,” and later turned her lens on women’s “intimate and self-injurious relationships with food.” Subtly pervasive in her work is a problematic element of doubt: Given her orphaned origins, shouldn’t she be more grateful for what she has? Difficult themes, but ones she’s equipped to address candidly; “I’ve always tried to make work that affects other people, that has meaning for other people.”

personal discoveries: (1) “I’ve realized that where I’m going is inextricably linked with where I’m coming from.” (2) “Grad school really challenges us to step outside what’s comfortable. I think so much about process now; in the past I felt I could photograph with my eyes closed.” (3) “My work is very personal, and I don’t try to hide that behind a curtain anymore. I know I’m not the only woman who has felt what I’ve felt — difficulties, confusion, sighs of relief. If a handful of people recognize that in my work and feel that they’re not alone in the world, I’ll meet my goal as an artist.”