Christine Sun Kim | Deaf Death
February 19, 2026 @ 6:00 pm
Prior Presents 2025–26
Christine Sun Kim
A co-presentation with the Department of Visual Arts
Christine Sun Kim is a Berlin-based artist who works with sound, language, and the complexities of communication. She uses musical notation, infographics, and language—both in her native American Sign Language (ASL) and written English—to create drawings, site-specific murals, paintings, video installations, and sculptures.
In her lecture-performance Deaf Death, Kim explores the frequent autocorrection of “deaf” to “death” in text-based technologies. Through a study of popular media, memes, disability signage, and recent headlines, Kim questions what defines disability, and how different definitions reflect fears and hopes for the future.
Details
Feb 19, 2026
6 p.m.
Price
Free entry, reservation required.
Venue
Luth Concert Hall
The Prior Performing Arts Center
“Kim’s work . . . is often the first encounter museumgoers have with the question of what it is like to live in a hearing world as a Deaf person — with all the anger, frustration and, most strikingly when it comes to Kim’s work, the humor that it entails.”
Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980, active Berlin, Germany), Mind Touch Touch Touch, 2025, digital print of charcoal drawing
Courtesy of the artist, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles and New York, and WHITE SPACE, Beijing.
Repetition and iteration define Christine Sun Kim’s work, which distinctly incorporates the visual representation of sign language. This mural was made exclusively for the Cantor’s front window and comes from a body of work that combines text and graphic representations of signs in American Sign Language (ASL). Here, Kim depicts the arc of the hand movement in the sign obsess, which is a compound formed by the signs for mind and touch. Through her practice, Kim foregrounds Deaf culture; explores the relationship between sound, language, and image; and explores the social politics of communication.
Explore More
Cantor Window Exhibition
Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980, active Berlin, Germany), Mind Touch Touch Touch, 2025, digital print of charcoal drawing
Courtesy of the artist, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles and New York, and WHITE SPACE, Beijing.
Repetition and iteration define Christine Sun Kim’s work, which distinctly incorporates the visual representation of sign language. This mural was made exclusively for the Cantor’s front window and comes from a body of work that combines text and graphic representations of signs in American Sign Language (ASL). Here, Kim depicts the arc of the hand movement in the sign obsess, which is a compound formed by the signs for mind and touch. Through her practice, Kim foregrounds Deaf culture; explores the relationship between sound, language, and image; and explores the social politics of communication.
CLICK HERE for a video of obsess being signed in ASL.