Show & Tell with Artist Christine Sun Kim

Last week, the artist Christine Sun Kim was in New York for the launch of her public artwork “Too Much Future” now occupying the Whitney Museum’s billboard space on Gansevoort Street near the southern entrance of the High Line Park. The commission puts Kim in impressive company among some of the more acclaimed artists working today, including Alex Katz, Do Ho Suh, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, but Kim is unique among this group of artists for her focus on sound, which is grounded in her experience and perspective of being deaf since birth. Kim’s work yields revelatory insights into the power and politics of sound that are easily (and often) overlooked by those of us who take it for granted. If the idea of a deaf artist working in the field of sound strikes you as contradictory, it shouldn’t. Engaging with Kim in person, one quickly becomes aware of how sound shapes pretty much every aspect of human life and interaction. Rather than having Kim explain her work, we wanted to capture a bit of her effervescent, straight-up hilarious personality. Over breakfast at The Standard Grill and beyond, we peppered her with questions, to which she responded with characteristic humor, a quality that belies the forcefulness and determination of her explorations.