Christine Sun Kim: FOR EVER

This autumn, Christine Sun Kim presents FOR EVER, a major new site-specific commission at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean. Created in response to the distinctive chapel-like architecture of Mudam’s Pavilion gallery, FOR EVER serves as a monument to the longevity and resilience of Deaf culture and the Deaf community. Through a series of sculptural canvases and a soundscape made in collaboration with musician Matt Karmil, Kim’s exhibition highlights the fact that deaf people have always existed and will continue to do so with pride.

Christine Sun Kim’s (b. 1980, USA) practice considers how sound operates in society, deconstructing the politics of sound and exploring how oral languages operate as social currency. Musical notation, written language, infographics, American Sign Language (ASL), the use of the body, and strategically deployed humour are all recurring elements in her practice. Working across drawing, performance, video and large-scale murals, Kim explores her relationship to spoken and signed languages, to her built and social environments, and to the world at large.

FOR EVER will feature four new large sculptural canvases, each depicting the elongated and repeated outlines of the word in American Sign Language (ASL). Not only does Kim use the language in her day-to-day life, but she has also extensively examined how it is expressed, interpreted and perceived in her artistic practice. Over the centuries, the Deaf community has endured oppression and erasure from society through attempts to ban sign languages, social discrimination, and the medicalisation of deafness, which continues today. In the US, for example, a gene therapy treatment for a rare genetic form of deafness has recently been introduced. This development implies that deafness itself is and can be something to opt out of, eradicated or cured. In the context of FOR EVER, Kim encourages the Deaf community and others to continue standing up to constant elimination and erasure, and to proudly consider deafness a crucial part of human biodiversity.

Usually working with black and white, the FOR EVER canvases are painted turquoise blue – the colour most widely recognised as representing Deaf communities. The space between 'for' and 'ever' symbolises the endless possibilities that can unfold between expressing the word and its infinite realisation. Through solidarity, advocacy and opening up a thinking space, the artist invites us to consider the enduring presence of deaf existence and its shifting visibility within historical, cultural and institutional narratives.

In FOR EVER, low-frequency sound vibrations can be experienced audibly and, at times solely, physically, via a soundscape that the artist has made in collaboration with musician Matt Karmil. These frequencies become centred within the bodies that perceive them. 

Throughout the exhibition, sound, language and communication are present in audible, aesthetic, written and embodied forms. For example, the mechanical creation of sound through the record player at the centre of the room differs from the lyrical expression of “forever” in ASL as materialised in the canvases. The record is looped to suggest an endless cycle, evoking the idea of eternity. Yet it is pressed on lacquer, a less durable material that will slowly deteriorate over the course of the exhibition, creating tension between what is temporary and what is everlasting. The Pavilion thus becomes a place to reflect on the various ways visual and sonic registers of language and communication are produced, perceived, understood and remembered. 

Through the glass corridor connecting the Pavilion to the museum’s main building, the hollows of 'forever' can be seen on the windows on either side. Produced in semi-transparent foil, the works are suggestive rather than fully present, their material presence rendered more ambiguous in contrast to the large, weighty canvases in the main space. They are discernible from outside, extending beyond the exhibition space. The window installation symbolises the ongoing efforts of Deaf communities towards greater recognition and representation in a hearing-centred world.

In FOR EVER, Christine Sun Kim illuminates the temporality of what is both real and abstract such as presence, communication and sound. By repeatedly and insistently materialising “forever,” she renders the ongoing process of reshaping dominant discourses and histories through action both tangible and palpable.

Christine Sun Kim: FOR EVER is curated by Léon Kruijswijk, Performance Curator, Mudam Luxembourg, with Hollie Douglas, Assistant Curator, Mudam Luxembourg.