Christine Sun Kim
b. 1980, Orange County, CA; lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Trauma, 2020
Charcoal on paper
Courtesy of the Artist and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles
Charting oppression. How do you document something that cannot easily be perceived or described? Christine Sun Kim’s drawing takes the form of an infographic—a mathematical graph—to communicate the personal and societal hardships experienced by the Deaf community across time and position. The undulating waves visualize layered and oftentimes invisible cycles of harm, which have long-term emotional, physical, and psychological repercussions. Kim began creating work inspired by personal trauma after performing the national anthem in American Sign Language at the Super Bowl in February 2020 and the onset of COVID-19. “I was thinking about all this trauma that was building up, and trauma that I’ve faced over the course of my life,” Kim explains. “I'm a woman, I'm a Deaf woman, I'm Asian, all this trauma on top of trauma. It just really started to unravel.” Trauma depicts the exhaustion of repeated injustice and discrimination, inviting a shared awareness of Deaf identity and community.
Artist Description
Seven drawings in white frames are hung on the wall. They are hung divided above and below a horizon line. Two drawings on the left are above the line, then three drawings follow, below the line; and the final two drawings on the right are hung above the line again. Each drawing depicts a graph chart drawn by hand in black charcoal. The first drawing on the left has writing at the top that reads “ONE SINGLE ACT OF OPPRESSION” with a wave graph chart showing “TRAUMA” at the top of each wave and “GRIEF” at the bottom of each wave. Another chart reads “DEAF HISTORY” with the word “COMMUNITY” crossed out. Then it reads “ERASED” at the top of each wave and “ERASING” at the bottom of each wave. Another drawing depicts waves of “SELF-DOUBT” and “SELF-HATE” in relationship to “ANXIETY FROM TRAUMA,” which is written above the graph.
-- Description by Liza Sylvestre and Christopher Robert Jones
Basic Description
Seven framed prints arranged on a white wall, arranged in two rows. The drawings are arranged in a stepped layout resembling a shallow ‘U’ or a dip in a waveform. There is a total of seven framed pieces: three at the top row (left, center-right, and right), and four positioned below them (centered), forming two descending steps from the outer frames toward the middle. Each print contains a hand-drawn graph with a wavy line, resembling a sound wave. Each individual print has a title in capitalized letters, reading “ONE SINGLE ACT OF OPPRESSION,” “CONSTANT OPPRESSION,” “TRAUMA,” “ANXIETY FROM TRAUMA,” “TRAUMA UPON TRAUMA,” “DEAF HISTORY,” and “COMMUNITY TRAUMA.” In each print, at the peaks and valleys of the wavy lines are words related to trauma that read “TRAUMA,” “GRIEF,” “COMPLEX,” “IMPLICIT,” “DREAD,” “SELF-DOUBT,” “SELF-HATE,” “CYCLE,” “CIRCLE,” “ERASED,” “ERASING,” “TOXICITY,” and “SECRET.”