May 6, 2025 6:30 pm
Town Hall Seattle
Pay What You WillAvailableComing Soon
Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim discusses her wide-ranging practice around sound and language. Kim, who was born in California and is now based in Berlin, reflects on her experiences as part of the Deaf community, using performance, video, drawing, writing, and technology to explore how we perceive and understand sound. In her talk, Kim will delve into her work within various systems of visual communication, including American Sign Language (ASL), musical notation, infographics, and television captioning. With humor and critique, Kim illuminates the complexities of social interactions where language, culture, and access collide.
About the speaker
Christine Sun Kim
Artist
Christine Sun Kim is an American artist based in Berlin. Kim’s practice considers how sound operates in society, deconstructing the politics of sound and exploring how oral languages operate as social currency. Musical notation, written language, infographics, American Sign Language (ASL), the use of the body, and strategically deployed humor are all recurring elements in her practice. Working across drawing, performance, video and large scale murals, Kim explores her relationship to spoken and signed languages, to her built and social environments, and to the world at large.
Kim has exhibited and performed internationally, including at the Gwangju Biennale (2023); Secession, Vienna (2023); Queens Museum, New York (2022); the Drawing Center, New York (2022); the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2021); Manchester International Festival, Manchester (2021); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2020); Whitney Biennial, New York (2019); Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo (2019); Art Institute of Chicago (2018); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017); De Appel Arts Center, Amsterdam (2017); Berlin Biennale (2016); Shanghai Biennale (2016); MoMA PS1, New York (2015) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013), among numerous others. Kim’s awards and fellowships include an MIT Media Lab Fellowship, a United States Artists fellowship, a Ford and Mellon Foundations’ Disabilities Future Fellowship, and the Prix International d’Art Contemporain of the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco. Her works are held in numerous prominent collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, LACMA, Tate Britain, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. She is represented by François Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles and White Space in Beijing.