Christine Sun Kim’s art brims with rhythm and dynamic energy. Small-format drawings and sprawling murals, internet memes, text messages in public spaces, and banners towed across the sky by airplanes pack a punch and seem to want to explode the confines and constraints of their media. Her drawings are graphical and spare and largely fall into one of two categories: one utilizes the aesthetics of infographics, while the other adopts the formal repertoire of comic strips, notably speed lines to convey action and reaction.

Language, sound, body, identity and diaspora, translation, hierarchization, principles of exclusion, and societal norms: these are some of the vital concerns to which the artist dedicates herself in her formally diverse output. Many of her works share with the audience how it feels to be structurally and systematically excluded from the hearing majority community; to be forever subject to the rules of others and have to fight for opportunities that are available by default to the hearing. Kim’s art is unmistakably political, at its core demanding greater visibility for Deaf people and wider recognition of disability access writ large.