Christine Sun Kim is an American sound artist based in Berlin. Working predominantly in drawing, performance, and video, Kim's practice considers how sound operates in society. Musical notation, written language, American Sign Language, and the use of the body are all recurring elements in her work. Her work has been exhibited in major cultural institutions internationally, including in the Museum of Modern Art's first exhibition about sound in 2013 and the Whitney Biennial in 2019. She was named a TED Fellow in both 2013 and 2015 and a Director's Fellow at MIT Media Lab in 2015.
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. She uses elements from these systems such as body language, American Sign Language, musical and graphic notation, and language interpretation, inventing new structures for her compositions and extending each source's scope of communication. 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. 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 and the National Association of the Deaf. 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.
Artworks
Kim uses sound to explore her feelings in a unique way, as writer addresses. 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. Even though there was not much dialogue, she was fascinated by how detailed and descriptive the captions of the movie were. 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. She takes traditional music dynamics and refashions them into music notes. In one of her drawings, , 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.”
