MIT_8_deaf*_site(s)

A graphic image featuring dark pink text and braille-like dots on a solid pink background. The title 'MIT_8 deaf*_site(s) CRJ+LMS [2026]' is visible among the overlaid dots.

MIT_8_deaf*_site(s) is a captioning project created by Christopher Jones and Liza Sylvestre that examines the MIT public art collection and their environs through a self-guided tour.

deaf* is a term to describe a multiplicity of non-normative experiences, vantages, and epistemologies in/around aurality, orality, communication, listening, and beyond. 

It is a term contingent upon elsewheres, excesses, overflows, interstices, and the irreconcilable. Christopher Robert Jones + Liza Sylvestre develop and enact this term through 8 site-specific captioned pieces and wonder: Where is the difference felt between art work and art experience? What does it ‘take’ to access? Who puts the ‘public’ in public art?

Explore these captioned pieces by accessing our digital guide, available on Bloomberg Connects.

Experience the tour

Artist Bio

Christopher Robert Jones and Liza Sylvestre are transdisciplinary artists and writers based in illinois. through their art, research and pedagogic projects they explore how the complication of the normative sensory hierarchy can function as conceptual and aesthetic material. they define the artwork as a potential site to both share experience and to form new ways of understanding the intersection of senses, access, and learned systems of communication. they are research assistant professors at the university of illinois urbana champaign where they co-founded crip*—cripistemology and the arts, a creative and experimental research lab and pedagogical initiative housed within the college of fine and applied arts. their work has been shown internationally at venues including the whitney museum of american art (new york, us), the irish film institute (dublin, ie), plains art museum (fargo, us), the weisman art museum (minneapolis, us), john hansard gallery (southampton, uk), argos (brussels, be), soap factory (minneapolis, us), gallery 400 (chicago, il), bfi southbank (london, uk), the mit list visual arts center (cambridge, us), the zimmerli art museum (new jersey, us), museum für neue kunst (freiburg im breisgau, de), museum of contemporary art san diego (san diego, us), museum marta herford (herford, de), and museum für modern kunst (frankfurt, de). they have been the recipients of numerous grants and fellowships including a creative capital award, a grant from the mellon foundation, a joan mitchell fellowship, an arts work grant from the nea, and a louis comfort tiffany fellowship.

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