Artwork: Christine Sun Kim, Words Shape Reality, Jefferson City, USA, 2018
American artist Christine Sun Kim was born deaf and makes art about sound. She creates art that hinges on communication—its visual, social and textual subtleties—challenging the notion of sound as simply an auditory experience. She incorporates language—sign (ASL, American Sign Language), written, spoken—using symbols, words, drawings, noise, vibration, sight, touch, movement, performance and technology, expressing an expansive engagement with the world, and a complex relationship with deaf culture. Through her art Kim extends the possibilities of language and communicating, shifting people’s perception of being deaf as a restriction, of being “less” involved and able to interpret and communicate complexity.
The statement featured on Kim’s billboard Words Shape Reality powerfully underpins her artistic practice, in all its potentially layered meanings. The billboard was situated in Jefferson City, Missouri, USA, (2018) as part of a nationwide crowdfunded project by arts organisation For Freedoms called the ‘50 State Initiative’, created to engage the public in political participation and reaction. The organisation’s name was inspired by American artist Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms painting series (1943) based on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 call to Congress, advocating the basic human need for the public freedoms of speech, worship, want and from fear.