Artist Talk: Christine Sun Kim

Christine Sun Kim uses the medium of sound in performance and drawing to investigate her relationship with spoken languages and her aural environment. The conceptual underpinnings in her work stem from the artist’s understanding of the act of listening as, “not just an experience involving mere sound, but also a variety of sensory, emotional, and physical responses that reach beyond sonic properties.”

Kim uses various strategies to visually express these multilayered experiences. In the performance nap disturbance (Carroll/Fletcher Gallery at Frieze London, 2016), Kim and performers attempt to convey the artist’s awareness of sound etiquette when at home, or what she has described as “the quietness and loudness of sound.” In the drawing series sound diet (2018), Kim employs text and musical notes such as forte and piano to describe her aural environment, and in the series future base (2017) the artist uses mark-making as a way to express the multivalence of American Sign Language (ASL). Through each of these instances, Kim draws attention to sound as a form of cultural, social or political currency.

Christine Sun Kim lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She has held exhibitions and performances at institutions including: White Space, Beijing (solo); Carroll/Fletcher, London (solo); De Appel, Amsterdam (solo); Sound Live Tokyo; Berlin and Shanghai biennale; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, New York. Kim was awarded TED and MIT Media Lab Fellowships.

The CEAM Artist Residency is supported by a grant from the Dr. JoAnn Crisp-Ellert Fund at The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida.