Description

Glove Plenitude, 2021
Lithograph

28 ½” x 22”
Edition of 50

Glove Plenitude, by Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim, is a limited edition of 50 lithographic prints, produced by El Nopal Press, will be sold to benefit the mission of GYOPO. Glove Plenitude is an artwork that reflects and questions the untold and changing narratives within the Deaf community.

Glove Plenitude derives its name from “narrative plenitude,” a term coined by novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen. Nguyen describes Asian Americans as living in an economy of “narrative scarcity” where mainstream culture underrepresents, distorts, or erases Asian Americans from stories with “narrative plenitude.” The tensions between narrative scarcity and plenitude exist for all minority groups. Glove Plenitude presents a notion of storytelling that embraces framing and reframing, retelling and repetition, used within the Deaf community to achieve “narrative plenitude.” This concept speaks to Kim’s personal experience as a member of the Deaf community, navigating a world where the majority of what we see in mainstream media is produced through a hearing lens. “There aren’t enough narratives by Deaf people, let alone Asian Deaf. We need to constantly make, tell, and reframe our stories until we reach the point of ‘narrative plenitude’ in my communities, both Deaf and Asian,” says Kim.

In American Sign Language (ASL), the word "frame" is signed with two hands, utilizing both thumbs and index fingers to create a border which encloses the subject. In Glove Plenitude, a rendering of the sign for the word "frame" is layered on paper. Each frame represents the presentation of a narrative that becomes more complete with each layering, reframing, and re-angling. As these gestural images come together to create a whole, “glove scarcity” becomes “glove plenitude.” The hands narrating the story are hidden under gloves, evoking the questions: Whose stories are we telling, who are the storytellers, and for whom are the stories intended? Glove Plenitude is also a call to investigate and reflect on the true intention behind gestures of framing and reframing, performativity, and performance.

Christine Sun Kim

The California-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim explores concepts of sound, its visual representations, and how it is valued by society, from her perspective as part of the Deaf community. Kim uses performance, video, drawing, writing, and sound installation to uncover the depth and complexity of communication, including the politics of voice, listening, and language—questioning the implicit authority of spoken over signed language and the notion that sound is inextricably tied to hearing. She employs American Sign Language, musical notation, televisual captioning, and other systems of visual communication in her wide-ranging practice that addresses the intricacies of social exchange and the power of representation with frank wit and intelligence.