InterviewChristine Sun Kim on anger, humor and reimagining sound without hearing

Korean American Deaf artist Christine Sun Kim signs "Have Many Dumb Fights Against Rock," the title of her new exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) in Seoul in American Sign Language during an interview with The Korea Times at the museum, July 31. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

Christine Sun Kim, the Berlin-based Korean American Deaf artist now filling Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Seoul’s soaring atrium with sweeping black-and-white lines and a giant curved OLED screen, did not grow up surrounded by museums and galleries.

Her journey to becoming one of the highest-profile Deaf figures in global contemporary art began in a family focused on survival and, crucially, with parents who chose to learn sign language.

“My family didn’t really have any interest in the arts,” Kim signed during an interview with The Korea Times at the MMCA, July 31.

Her parents emigrated from Korea to the United States, where they had to learn English and American Sign Language (ASL) because they had two deaf daughters. “They didn’t have an easy start to their life in the U.S.,” she recalled.

Growing up in Orange County, California, Kim witnessed the expansion of disability rights firsthand. When the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted in 1990, she was 10 years old. “It was the increase, the boom, the expansion of access and that impacted my identity in general,” she said.

Still, art was not given. “We didn’t really as a family go to museums,” she added.

For Kim, her parents’ decision to learn sign language was foundational, both to her identity and to her career.

“I actually have a relationship with my parents that isn’t true for most Deaf people because their parents don’t communicate to them,” she said. “That gave me a relationship with my parents and a strong foundation to be a person …. I do believe that I became an artist because my parents learned sign. I really think that if they didn’t learn sign, I would not be an artist. And my sister thinks the same thing.”

One of the early encounters that opened the door came when her school brought in a Deaf art teacher.

“She came to our class and showed us how to make paper,” Kim said. “For me that blew my mind. I couldn’t have imagined that you were able to go to an art studio and make paper, and I still think about that Deaf art teacher’s visit to my school all these years later.”

Christine Sun Kim speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) in Seoul, July 31. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

During college, Kim avoided majoring in art, choosing other subjects for job security. Her access to the art world came through an ex-boyfriend who came from a family of artists. “That family took me to museums as the girlfriend and took me on trips to Europe," she said. "They would recommend cultural things for me to engage with. They were basically like a second family for me.”

Even though the relationship ended, she remains close to his mother.

Today, Kim’s name is firmly on the global art map. She ranked No. 34 on British art magazine ArtReview’s “Power 100” list in 2025 and recently held a major museum survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art that traveled to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Her work has appeared at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Gwangju Biennale and the Berlin Biennale, among several key venues.

Yet the artist admits she was not always the bright, humorous presence audiences meet at MMCA.

“No, no,” she said with a laugh when asked if she had always been this way. “I was quite frankly like a really angry kid. I was always fighting with my parents. I think I just wanted more out of life.”

She described growing up hearing “a lot of ‘no’s” — around access, around what she could or could not do. “I also personally wasn’t clear on what I wanted — I couldn’t really communicate myself well and that made me angry,” she said.

As an adult, she navigates that history differently.

“Now I kind of say yes to everything as a result, because I heard a lot of ‘no’s growing up,” she noted. At the same time, she has learned to ask. When MMCA staff first showed her the Seoul Box and indicated where the screen would go, she simply asked for more. “I said, well, can I have these other walls?” she recalled. “They said, ‘We don’t know, we’ve never done that before,’ but because I asked they had a discussion and ultimately we made it all possible.”

Christine Sun Kim's new work "Have Many Dumb Fights Against Rock" is seen at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) in Seoul, July 30. Yonhap

Kim carries a charged mix of anger and humor — a dynamic she sees as strategic. Over breakfast with her cousin on the day of the interview, she had been talking about an article she wrote for Cultured magazine on how her rage had intensified. For years, she felt her platform was too small to carry that rage safely.

“I couldn’t really share my rage — it would push people away. They’d be like, ‘Oh, this angry deaf girl,’ and not want to work with me or hear me out,” she said. Humor became her way to keep audiences in the room. “What I found is that humor is a really great way to keep people in the room, to stay with me.”

Her philosophy of art reflects that tension between anger and imagination.

“Art also really has the power to allow people to imagine what’s possible,” she said. “If you can imagine the world differently then maybe that world can be different.”

Rather than believing that a single artwork can directly change the world, she hopes her work can influence those who hold power to write better laws and policies for marginalized communities.

Kim’s reputation as a Deaf sound artist has grown out of a series of inventive conceptual moves that reframe what sound can be. Instead of treating sound as something purely to be heard, she translates it into musical notation stretched into drawings, motion lines borrowed from comics and graphic scores that viewers can physically walk through.

Christine Sun Kim, left, signs about her new work "Have Many Dumb Fights Against Rock" at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) in Seoul, July 30. Yonhap

Asked where her ideas come from, she traced them back not to constant stimulation but lack of it.

“I think being bored,” she said. “Growing up I didn’t have internet, I didn’t like to read books, TV didn’t have captions so I couldn’t watch and I daydreamed all the time.”

She is also attentive to small, overlooked traces of Deaf history. Pulling out a 10,000 won banknote during the interview, she pointed to the painting of King Sejong on the bill.

“This image on the bill was painted by a Deaf artist, a Deaf Korean artist,” she said, referring to painter Kim Ki-chang (1913-2001).

“Every Korean who interacts with a 10,000 won bill interacts with the Deaf community, right?" she said. "And so the Deaf community is very much something that people touch and hold in their hands every day and they don’t realize it. I think every Korean should know that.”

In the Seoul Box downstairs, that insistence on visibility and imagination takes architectural form. For Kim, the black-and-white lines, vibrating sound and stubborn “rock” at the center of her MMCA commission are not just graphic devices, but ways of asking who gets to speak, who is listened to and how a Deaf artist can redraw the contours of sound.