Christine Sun Kim: Off the Charts
ShowingFebruary 7, 2020 - July 19, 2020
Reference Gallery
California-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980) works in sound, performance, drawing, installation, and video. She considers the sonic as a multi-sensory phenomenon, one whose properties are auditory, visual, and spatial, as well as socially determined. Much of her work is invested in uncovering the politics of voice, listening, and language, troubling throughout conceptions of sound as being inextricably tethered to hearing and the implicit authority of spoken over signed language.
Economic, deadpan compositions, Kim’s drawings are usually executed in black charcoal. They represent scores that translate linguistic utterances, everyday and musical sounds into lines and notes. In one body of work, she attempts to represent the spatial qualities of American Sign Language (ASL), Kim’s first language, an endeavor that is, like systems of musical notation, inherently limited. In the List Center exhibition, the artist presents a series of new drawings breaking down the various factors involved in a number of personal decisions (“Why I Do Not Read Lips,” “Why I Work with Sign Language Interpreters”) by relative importance in pie chart form. Simultaneously funny and profound, the works also pivot on the absurdity of capturing complex choices and their cultural, social, and historical underpinnings in diagrammatic shorthand.
For the recent audio installation one week of lullabies for roux (2018), Kim commissioned a group of friends to create alternative lullabies for her daughter, Roux. Adhering to a set of rules including directives to omit lyrics and speech and focus on low frequencies, these compositions serve to vary what Kim has termed the “sound diet” for her child, raised trilingually in ASL, German Sign Language (DGS), and German, and to place equal weight on all three in a culture that tends to ascribe lesser relevance to signed communication.
Christine Sun Kim: Off the Charts is organized by Henriette Huldisch, Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (former Director of Exhibitions & Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center).
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Exhibitions at the List Center are made possible with the support of Fotene & Tom Coté, Audrey & James Foster, Idee German Schoenheimer, Joyce Linde, and Cynthia & John Reed.
General operating support is provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Council for the Arts at MIT; Philip S. Khoury, Associate Provost at MIT; the MIT School of Architecture + Planning; the Mass Cultural Council; and many generous individual donors. In-kind media sponsorship provided by 90.9 WBUR. The Advisory Committee Members of the List Visual Arts Center are gratefully acknowledged.
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One Week of Lullabies for Roux, 2018. Seven-channel audio installation, dimensions variable. Installation view, Christine Sun Kim: Off the Charts, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2020. Photo: Peter Harris Studio
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Installation view, Christine Sun Kim: Off the Charts, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2020. Photo: Mel Taing
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One Week of Lullabies for Roux, 2018. Seven-channel audio installation, dimensions variable. Installation view, Christine Sun Kim: Off the Charts, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2020. Photo: Peter Harris Studio
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Alphabet from the Speller’s Point of View, 2019. Courtesy the artist; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; and White Space Beijing, Beijing. Installation view, Christine Sun Kim: Off the Charts, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2020. Photo: Peter Harris Studio
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Installation view, Christine Sun Kim: Off the Charts, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2020.
Photo: Peter Harris Studio -
Shit Hearing People Say to Me, 2019. Courtesy the artist; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; and White Space Beijing, Beijing. Installation view, Christine Sun Kim: Off the Charts, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2020. Photo: Peter Harris Studio
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One Week of Lullabies for Roux, 2018. Seven-channel audio installation, dimensions variable. Installation view, Christine Sun Kim: Off the Charts, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2020. Photo: Peter Harris Studio
Press Coverage
Christine Sun Kim, Pedro Reyes Among Artists Creating Digital Billboards for NYC’s Essential Workers | Artforum
The Sound of Passing Time: Christine Sun Kim | Mousse Magazine | Sofia Lemos
Christine Sun Kim | Critic's Pick | Artforum | Damon Krukowski
'Off the Charts': Artist Christine Sun Kim on Her New Work, and Signing at the Super Bowl | SVA NYC | Emma Drew
Artist Christine Sun Kim on ‘deaf rage,’ the Super Bowl and the power of sound | PRI The World | Lucy Martirosyan
This Artist and Super Bowl Performer Wants to Make Her Work—and Her Wardrobe—Accessible | Vogue | Rachel Hahn
After Making a Splash at the Superbowl, Christine Sun Kim Is Just Getting Started | Garage Magazine | Annie Armstrong
I Performed at the Super Bowl. You Might Have Missed Me | New York Times | Christine Sun Kim
Christine Sun Kim, the Transgressive Deaf Artist, Will Sign the National Anthem Alongside Demi Lovato During the Super Bowl | Artnet | Zachary Small
16 Art Exhibits Worth Leaving The House For This Winter | WBUR The ARTery | Pamela Reynolds
Christine Sun Kim: Off the Charts | Artforum | Geoffrey Mack