Whitney Biennial 2019
May 17–Oct 27, 2019
Christine Sun Kim
38
Floor 5
Born 1980 in Orange County, CA
Lives in Berlin, Germany
In her group of charcoal drawings Christine Sun Kim represents different degrees of what she calls “Deaf rage” with hand-drawn charts that graph scenarios privileging the needs of hearing individuals. Outwardly these measurements appear objective, but Kim undercuts their authority with strikethroughs, smudges, and sly puns. Charting frustrations in everyday and art-world environments alike, the images invite viewers to engage on an informal, personal level with specific aspects of Deaf culture—a term that has been used to make visible the social values, histories, and art that share sign language as a connector. Kim first showed these works in an exhibition she titled With a Capital D, pointing to the distinction of this culture from physical deafness.
Degrees of My Deaf Rage in The Art World, 2018
Christine Sun Kim, Degrees of My Deaf Rage in the Art World, 2018. Charcoal and oil pastel on paper, 49.25 × 49.25 in. (125 × 125 cm). Y.D.C. © Christine Sun Kim
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Christine Sun Kim
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Danielle Linzer: Hello I’m Danielle Linzer, Christine Sun Kim's friend, and she asked me to voice this discussion of her drawings to you.
Hi, my name is Christine. For this new series, I am doing drawings that come in groups. I have actually borrowed a lot of different formats that are already out there in the world. These are things people are very familiar with such as memes, music, musical notation, subtitles, captions, English, written English.
I have five that are about Deaf rage, and one in the series is my specific Deaf rage that I've experienced in the art world. For us in the Deaf community, we totally know what it means, but it hasn't been something that we're really good at communicating to others. I think people need to know that they do have rage, that there is rage out there.
There are different levels and different amounts of rage. And in making the drawings I realized that kind of works with different mathematical angles: acute angles, an obtuse angle, those different amounts. Different rages. And I thought oh, that's a nice parallel.
I use sign language to communicate, but I also don't want my deafness to define my work, and so I've been hesitant to incorporate it or acknowledge it. Deaf Rage was my attempt to really speak on it, and initially it felt really heavy. And then after that, I don't know, it feels healing. Now I’m able to put my rage in so many words and in so many angles, and I could see the information, it's there in front of me, it's visually clear.