When Christine Sun Kim took the stage at Town Hall Seattle on April 30, 2025, the room radiated with energy, care, and kinship. Families, Deaf community leaders, elders, artists, and young people signed across aisles, exchanging greetings and excitement.
Presented by the University of Washington Public Lecture Series and supported by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, 4Culture, and the Henry Art Gallery, the evening marked a profound moment in contemporary art, Deaf, and diasporic presence.
Kim, a Berlin-based artist, is known for her expansive practice in sound, drawing, performance, captioning, and visual language. Her work interrogates the norms of sonic culture and recasts dominant frameworks of sound as sites of agency, memory, and emotion. Through her visual language-based practice, she invites audiences to reconsider the power structures embedded in communication: what is said, unsaid, and misinterpreted.
At Town Hall, Kim opened with a meditation on the American Sign Language (ASL) sign for “future,” tracing its metaphorical reach. She reflected on her evolving relationship to language, identity, and geography—describing herself as navigating a “quadruple consciousness:” Deaf, Korean, American, and woman. Her artistic fellowships in Germany and China pushed her to reconsider how scale: cultural, historical, institutional, shaped her as an artist. In China, the vastness of history reoriented her diasporic lens, while Germany challenged her assumptions about Western-centric art discourse.
In one of the most impactful moments, Kim described avoiding imagery of hands in her early work because it felt “too obvious.”
“To me, having hands in my work was too literal,” she shared. “It wasn’t until this series that I felt like my platform was big enough, I felt safe enough to finally incorporate hands.” That series, rooted in the idea of debt, evolved into works like America’s Debt to Deaf People. “I never stop with just one piece,” she said. “Because of my intersectional identities, I feel I have to overexplain myself to avoid misunderstanding. And that comes from anxiety.”
Kim challenged the notion of personal debt by asking, “Why are we always owing others? Why doesn’t America owe us?” Kim explored this through artworks addressing trauma and injustice, broken education systems, limited communication access, and exclusion from family. “Great family relationships are owed to us,” she said. “So many of us can’t communicate with our families because we weren’t taught sign language.” Her vision also includes reliable internet access, including planes, so Deaf people can stay connected.
Speaking directly to this in our interview, Kim reflected on the emotional tone of American Sigh Language. “Sighs mean not giving up. You have to inhale and exhale; in that exhalation is hope, that gives you that beat to reframe. Inhaling before you exhale indicates you have hope.” For American Sigh Language, Kim gathered 66 people globally. “It’s a response,” she said. “It is collective, we are all going through something together.”
Kim’s mural at the Henry Art Gallery, Ghost(ed) Notes, adapts musical notation into a visual score. Staff lines extend without expected notes, reflecting the experience of being overlooked in predominantly hearing institutions. “A ghost note in music is felt but not heard,” Kim explained. “Deaf people move through space in that way-we’re part of the composition, but rarely given sonic agency.” She added, “Each note in Ghost(ed) Notes represents a person. It’s about who’s visible, who’s missing.”
The mural interacts with the Henry’s architecture and the city beyond. It’s a quiet yet radical intervention asking us to consider whose presence is acknowledged in public narratives. Kim’s work lives not only in galleries, but in streets and shared spaces.
As Kim told me earlier, “I’ve never really belonged in one space. I’m always in between: Deaf, Korean, American, woman.” That in-betweenness shapes her public art. “In order to get what you need, you need to be in everyone’s space. I need to communicate my space to people.” In cities like Manchester, captioning the public realm became a visibility practice. “I used to make work that spoke only to the art world,” she said. “Now, I make it for the people. And I absolutely love that.”
Motherhood, Kim emphasized, is central to her practice. “I make work with and around my family. My daughter will always know she was part of what I created.” Her daughter Roux’s integrated drawing of a snowman was featured in a Whitney exhibit. “She recognized her own drawing and lit up,” Kim said. “That’s what I want–to show my kids they are in the work.”
Kim honored the impact of Deaf elders, storytellers, and language keepers. Their influence grounds her in a cultural lineage of care and creativity.
Throughout the evening, Kim’s humor illuminated her critiques about flawed media captions or institutional access. Her caption-based works highlight how Deaf expression is often mistranslated by voice-to-text technologies.
“I want to make space for Deaf rage,” Kim said. “Not just the sanitized version, but the layered, ancestral kind.” Her Deaf Rage series grew from one drawing to six. That expansion was what’s notable about Kim’s approach is her refusal to simplify complexity. Her work neither panders nor distances, it invites. Even for audiences unfamiliar with Deaf culture or diasporic identity, there is a sense of welcome, not instruction. She makes space for discomfort and dialogue alike.
What stood out immediately was the diverse age range and cultural breadth of the audience. From middle school and high school students to seniors in the Deaf community, the room was alive with multiple generations. One memorable moment came when a young Deaf student proudly wearing a Real Madrid jersey signed excitedly about attending with his teachers and family. His presence, along with the many Deaf students, signaled how much representation matters. Asian American artists, cultural workers, and disability justice advocates also filled the seats. Another moving moment came when an Asian Deaf mother, active in performance arts committees, attended with her daughter while wearing handmade visual artwork inspired by Kim’s pieces. This was a night not only for art lovers, but for educators, caregivers, and cultural stewards.
Audience members at the event nodded, laughed, and signed in resonance. For many in attendance, Kim’s work art is testimony, archive, and provocation. As the audience flowed into the lobby afterward, you could feel that this wasn’t a typical post-lecture crowd. People lingered, processing. Interpreters continued to sign animatedly. There was a shared sense that something important had just transpired.
Asked about the future, Kim replied: “I’m not sure what comes next. But I hope my daughters know they were always part of this.”
Kim’s work reshapes the landscape of contemporary art. In an era where access is still an afterthought in many institutions, she reminds us that Deaf and disabled artists are defining the art world.
Her call is clear: support artists, support families, and make room for futures beyond the margins. The future, as Kim creates it, bends forward with visualized possibility.
Christine Sun Kim’s mural “Ghost(ed) Notes” is currently on view on the east façade of the Henry Art Gallery. For more information about her work, visit henryart.org.
