Christine Sun Kim in “Friends & Strangers” - Season 11 | Art21

♪ethereal ambient music♪

[interpreter VO] I've just been noticing

that my life is just one big echo.

♪sparse ethereal music♪
Or, rather, maybe just small

echoes that become one big echo,

and that's something that's
been a part of my life

since I was born.

And it has to deal with repetition,

♪♪♪

patterns,

something that constantly comes up.

When I work with interpreters,

I experience repetition.

Like, whatever I sign, Beth repeats.

She's echoing me.

And sign language is full of echoes.

You can use one hand shape,

and echo that, repeat that,

and it just changes the entire

sign or the entire word based on

where you put it on your body.

♪♪♪

The shape of the sign for "future,"

which is two semicircles
away from your face,

that's the sign for "future,"

it has a line that you can follow,

so I drew that line.

And it's an echo in and of itself.

♪♪♪

And so since it's my ideas,

it's my work that's being presented,

and a lot of it does have to do

with repetition and a lot of it

is full of echoes,

I think that is why I want to be

as clear as possible. [chuckles]

♪pulsating ethereal music♪
- [Interpreter] I'm DJ Kurs of Deaf West Theater.

At Deaf West Theater,

we bridge deaf and hearing
worlds through theater.

We're advancing visibility
and representation.

But I'm jealous of Christine Sun Kim,

because she does the same thing,

but on her own.

She can draw a pie chart on paper

and have a similar impact.

Please welcome artist Christine Sun Kim.

[applause]

- [Christine] So this
tweet here that says,

"I can 100 percent promise that you

"learning sign language is easier

"than a deaf person learning to hear"

is a tweet from a deaf writer,

and I think that this framing
...is it. [chuckles]

This is how I want you

to think about who I am.

This is my deaf identity,

and this is where I'm coming from.

♪sparse piano music♪

People love to always

ask why I don't read lips,

so this is a question I've

gotten over and over again.

♪♪♪

I love the use of infographics.

It's this idea, shown visually,

that can be communicated without barriers.

It can cross languages,

it can cross cultures.

So this is the same old [bleep]

hearing people say to me.

And as you can see,

this is equally distributed because

people say a lot of [bleep] to me.

[laughter]
♪ethereal synth music♪

- [Interpreter] They look so good!

- [Man] Cute!
-[interpreter] [laughs]

- [Christine] Can you lift yours up more,

just a smidgen?

Yes.

Okay, that's what we want.

-That one up.
- [Man] This might be low.

- [Interpreter] She
hasn't mentioned yours.

- [Man] Okay.

- [interpreter VO] I am very
comfortable with collaboration.

[interpreter] I think that looks good.

[interpreter VO] I usually work with people,

whether that's interpreters that

I'm working with or people who

are speaking on my behalf.

I'm used to that.

♪♪♪

I collaborate with my
partner, Tom Mader, a lot

and this has been really

nice because I've been able

to kind of increase
who I collaborate with.

♪♪♪
- So, we've all grown as artists,

and lecturers and performers,

so let's not do that,

but it's still very easy

to find online.

- [interpreter VO] Motherhood has
really impacted my practice.

It's impacted the way I envision

and the way I approach art.

♪♪♪

I allow my child to be a
part of the process at times.

Sometimes we collaborate on a project.

♪♪♪

Often, I work with musical notation.

I've really thought about the
emptiness of the staff lines.

It's not about the notes, necessarily,

but it's about the
foundation that's being laid.

And I decided to incorporate our family.

I've done one,

Tom has done one,

and Roux has done one.

When I sat down with Roux

and I explained the work,

she created this drawing,

and then she did another
one with notes on it.

And I asked her what it was,

and she said to me

it was a song about family.

[laughter]

I've lived in Berlin

now for almost 10 years.

As an artist, I'm having
a great life there,

because I feel like

there's so much less pressure.

♪bubbly synth music♪
What I've noticed is that being

a parent doesn't have a dent

or an impact on my bank

account almost at all.

Daycare is free.

Everything in the city is affordable,

[chuckles] especially compared to
a place like New York

or Los Angeles.

And I also have space to create work.

♪♪♪

So, with all of that,

I've just found myself recognizing more

and more the benefits of a government

that supports their citizens.

Like, actually supports their people.

People in Germany aren't in debt.

But here in the US,

I see friends living here
who have more than one job

just to make ends meet,

and I realize that I'm angry about debt,

I'm angry that people are living

like this because I'm not.

I think about my family, my friends,

my future, and I'm worried.

[indistinct chatter]

- I was so
happy to hear from you.

Of course I had to call.

And I think all my friends

are coming in next week to see your work.

- [interpreter VO] A perk of being a member

of the deaf community is that you

have this shared culture,

this shared language.

And so people like to stay there.

They don't want to be oppressed

in the way that they are
in the hearing community.

But you kind of get trapped.

Sometimes you get

stuck in that echo,

and I was there for a while.

But then, I became an artist,

and I had to go into

the hearing world.

♪uplifting synth music♪

I'm always a little bit

jealous of artists who have

the privilege to be misunderstood.

For me, I automatically feel

like I need to explain what things mean.

I have to say, "No, it's
not this, it's that."

And I think that stems

from a place of how misunderstandings

can affect my rights,

all these little things in my daily life,

as well as navigating access,

education, entertainment, family.

Growing up, I loved art,

but I didn't really take

classes 'cause there weren't

interpreters available.

♪tender music♪
I remember when I was in high school,

there was a sculpture class that

I wanted to take that
I thought was perfect.

I wanted to work with my hands.

They said no.

Then, as an undergrad

majoring in graphic design,

they had a night class

that I wanted to take.

They said no.

So it was interesting.

At that time, I kept getting told no.

And then when I grew up

and moved to New York,

it was super crowded,

and there was hearing people everywhere,

which wasn't my experience

growing up in California.

And so I had to figure out how

to constantly communicate with

these hearing people.

And people were just in my face,

and I was in people's faces.

Because of that, I just
had less fear around it.

♪uplifting music♪

And what I've realized is that

New York gave me the
skills to navigate through

the world fearlessly.

[mechanical whirring]

When Hitomi, the curator
here at Queens Museum,

reached out to me and we were

corresponding back and forth,

I thought, "How could I come up

"with an idea without actually

"physically visiting the Queens Museum?"

[indistinct chatter]

And in her correspondence,

she mentioned that Queens

was the epicenter of COVID for a while,

and that really struck
me and got me thinking.

[honking]
[siren]

I thought about rest.

I'm also seeing people being

overworked during the pandemic,

without maybe having health insurance.

♪soft pensive music♪
Lately, I've been into motion lines.

♪♪♪

You can find those in

comic strips or comic books.

And I thought they were
a perfect reflection

of sign language, and how it carries

a lot of weight and emotion.

For example, the sign for "time."

I tap my wrist with my index finger.

I looked at a bunch of different

signs that come into contact

with the body,

and I came up with a one-line poem

to fit the current climate

and what was happening in this area.

"Time owes me rest again."

♪♪♪
- [woman] Yeah, maybe you

can shave a little bit.

Yeah, bottom, bottom part.

- [interpreter VO] This experience
made me think I can

work with such a large scale.

I thought a lot about that.

And it felt right that maybe

this is the best way where we

can shove or force our deafness

or our existence

or our deaf voice,

and do that in their everyday lives,

in their everyday space.

And it happened that the
Manchester International Festival

reached out to me
wanting to work together,

saying that I could

show any work I wanted.

And I was like, "All right,

"let me aim for the
biggest thing I can do."

I said, "Let's caption the city."

♪♪♪

I want people to see captions,

to think about why they're there,

to think about who might want them.

"Oh, yeah!

"Deaf people."

My favorite one is this

'cause I wanted it all, I wanted more.

I was like, "Let's caption

"the sky and get a plane."

♪♪♪

And doing all that work has

given me the realization that

scale equals visibility,

and that has the ability

to shape social norms.

I want deaf lives to be in your mind,

and be part of what we
consider acceptable,

what's normal.

♪uplifting music♪
If you don't see us,

we have no place to be,

and I think that's why

I've gotten into scale,

and also, I'm just greedy, too.

[crowd laughing]
♪ethereal ambient music♪

♪♪♪

Hello, my name is Azikiwe Mohammed.

I am happy to have been featured by 
Art21 in their series New York Close Up.

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