Christine Sun Kim

Christine Sun Kim was born in 1980 and raised in Southern California with hearing parents and a deaf sister.[10] She has been profoundly deaf since birth. She attended University High School in Irvine, California and graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2002 with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies.[11] She has a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and another in Sound and Music from Bard College.[12][13]

Kim investigates the operations of sound and various aspects of Deaf culture in her performances, videos, and drawings. In developing her personal visual language, Kim draws from a variety of information systems.[14] She uses elements from these systems such as body language, American Sign Language (ASL), musical and graphic notation, and language interpretation, inventing new structures for her compositions and extending each source's scope of communication.[15] She further uses sound to explore her own relationship to verbal languages and her environment. Through her work, she gains control of voice and sound, seeking to release them from social conventions.[16]

In 2020, she performed at Super Bowl LIV, representing the non-hearing community in what has become an annual partnership between the National Football League (NFL) and the National Association of the Deaf (NAD).[17] She later penned an op-ed in The New York Times criticizing Fox Sports for cutting away during her American Sign Language performances of "America the Beautiful" and the national anthem.[18]

Kim uses sound to explore her feelings in a unique way, as writer Molly Hannon addresses.[19] Kim’s series of drawing, “The Sound of, ” was exhibited at Rubin Museum of Art. “It all goes back to my experience watching the film, Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter.” said Kim.[20] Even though there was not much dialogue, she was fascinated by how detailed and descriptive the captions of the movie were.[21] She started to wonder if she was able to portray the sound of intangible objects like emotions or senses. This has become the essential reason she created this series.[20] She takes traditional music dynamics and refashions them into music notes.[22] In one of her drawings, The Sound of Obsessing, Kim uses the symbol “p” to represent the sound of piano and indicate the note is played quietly. As more “p” appears, the notes are played more quietly. Kim concretizes abstract ideas. She believes that obsession has a repetitive pattern and can take up a person’s mind. She illustrates this pattern with the “p”s. “As time goes on, the obsession quickens, represented by the shrinking distance of p’s. Finally, at the end, the p’s are crowded and your mind is racing non-stop. You become totally engrossed with your obsession.”[23]

• Calibration Room and Bounce House, University of Texas at Austin Visual Arts Center, March–April 2015.[24]
• Nap Disturbance, performance, Frieze London, October 6–9, 2016. Organized by Carroll/Fletcher.[14]
• Face Value, workshop, Tate Modern, London, October 13–14, 2016.[25]
• (LISTEN), A sound walk by Christine Sun Kim, organized by Avant.org, New York City, October 29–30, 2016.[26]
• Lautplan, Kammer Klang, Cafe Oto, London, UK, 2017[27]
• Busy Days, De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, NL, 2017[28]
• Sound Diet and Lullabies for Roux, White Space Beijing booth, Art Basel, CH, 2018[29]
• Too Much Future, Public Art Installation, Whitney Museum, NY, USA, 2018[30]
• With a Capital D, White Space, Beijing, CN, 2018-19[31]
• Finish Forever, Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, 2018-19[32]
• ‘To Point a Naked Finger’: Christine Sun Kim & Thomas Mader, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Jan. 26–Apr. 21, 2019[33]
• Music Box + Smithsonian APA, New Orleans, LA, USA, 2019[34]
• Spoken on My Behalf, Brown Arts Initiative, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA, 2019[34]

• Sounds Like Her, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK, 2017[35]
• The World is Sound, Rubin Museum, New York, NY, USA, 2017[36]
• Soundtracks, SF Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA, 2017[37]
• Resonant Spaces, Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, NH, USA, 2017[38]
• Serralves Collection: New Lines, Images, Objects, Serralves Museum, Porto, PT, 2018[39]
• For the Record, ifa gallery, Berlin, DE[40]
• Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize, Galeria Municipal do Porto, Porto, PT, 2018[41]
• What We Make, Ross Art Museum, Delaware, OH, USA, 2018[42]
• 50 State Initiative, For Freedoms, Jefferson City, MO and Des Moines, IA, USA, 2018[43]
• Louder Than Words, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA, USA, 2019[44]
• Whitney Biennial 2019, Whitney Museum, NY, USA, 2019[45]
• Resonance: A Sound Art Marathon, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA[46]

• Official website