Three Tables III (AGB, HPA, DTS), 2020
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In Three Tables III (AGB, HPA, DTS) Kim elongates and arranges musical notes to resemble both musical staffs and dining tables, visually stacking them as examples of ongoing and historical distress experienced by members of the Deaf community. The bottom table, labeled “dinner table syndrome” (DTS for short), refers to the isolation many Deaf people experience when sharing meals with hearing family members who have not learned to sign. The middle table, labeled “hearing people anxiety,” describes feelings of fear or frustration caused by cultural or language insensitivities of hearing people. The disastrous impact of inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) on Deaf culture looms over the other tables. Bell agitated for the intermarriage of Deaf and hearing people with the aim of eliminating deafness in children and fought to eradicate sign language education in favor of oralism, or lip reading. By merging the “legs” of Bell’s table with the others, Kim argues that his eugenicist ideas helped to create the conditions of the other two.
Christine Sun Kim, Three Tables III (AGB, HPA, DTS), 2020
Christine Sun Kim, Three Tables III (AGB, HPA, DTS), 2020. Charcoal on paper, 58 1/4 × 58 1/4 in. (148 × 148 cm). Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. University purchase, Bixby Fund, 2023. © Christine Sun Kim