Christine Sun Kim – Epic Ominous Music
Christine Sun Kim was born deaf, and as such taught that the audible world wasn’t part of her life. She therefore found visual arts as a way to express herself, however sound was ever present, and she eventually found her voice through her own way of expressing sound visually.
For Kim this started in 2008 during an artist residency in Berlin. It was here she noticed, while visiting museums and galleries, a trend of artists working with sound. She wondered if this would further distance her from art, a medium which she previously felt she could engage with despite deafness.
Instead of letting sound art disempower her, she started creating a new body of work about sound. Kim’s relationship with sound comes from observing others' reactions to it, and has learnt what she calls a kind of “sound etiquette,” not slamming the door or making too much noise while eating for example. Knowing that sound doesn't have to be known only through the ears, Kim started creating a new form of visual language to express sounds, and discovered similarities between the languages of American Sign Language (ASL) and music, they are both highly special and inflected, a minor differentiation can change the meaning completely.
Indeed sound can “be felt, seen and experienced as an idea” and so in 2015 Kim was invited to speak about the “rich treasure of visual language” by TED. As a result, The enchanting music of sign language, has since been viewed by hundreds of thousands of viewers. By relating ASL’s rhythmic spacing and repetition, Kim created a new codified technique for drawing sound.
The Shoreditch Arts Club is happy to be exhibiting three works from Kim’s series of work that express sound scores, Epic Ominous Music, Very Fast Rap Song, and Closing Credits Music, all charcoal on paper, 2016. Positioned around the area where our DJ booth lives, the works remind us of sound unheard, of sound when there is none, and of alternate sounds to what we can hear.
In a society rich with sound, Kim’s works explore how ASL has value in the audible world, and the results have seen ASL put on one of the most important stages in the world. In 2020, Kim performed the national anthem at the Super Bowl to 102 million viewers in what has since become a partnership between the National Association of the Deaf and the National Football League.
Christine Sun Kim is an American artist based in Berlin and working predominantly in drawing, performance, and video. Kim's practice considers how sound operates in society and the value attached to it. Musical notation, written language, American Sign Language (ASL), and body language are recurring elements in her work.
You can read more about Christine Sun Kim via Wikipedia, and view her TED talk here.
Her works Epic Ominous Music, Very Fast Rap Song, and Closing Credits Music are on loan from a private collection and on view at Shoreditch Arts Club until October 2023.
Christine Sun Kim, Epic Ominous Music, 2016
Charcoal on paper, 51 x 65 cm
Christine Sun Kim, Very Fast Rap Song, 2016
Charcoal on paper, 51 x 65 cm
Christine Sun Kim, Closing Credits Music, 2016
Charcoal on paper, 51 x 65 cm
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