In Lighter Than Air the artists probe the misunderstandings between deaf and hearing people
The most striking piece in Lighter Than Air is ATTENTION (2022), an installation featuring two large red arm-shaped inflatables extending from facing walls towards a torso-sized boulder in the centre. One of the arms flutters up and down, as if waving, while the other – with an index finger sticking out – appears to be anxiously pointing at the stone. Despite the frantically quivering movements caused by the humming inflators, both gestures culminate in abrupt deflation and ultimately fail to make contact with the stone. As the arms droop to the floor in exhaustion, the stone remains undisturbed – almost humorously underscoring its indifference to the arms’ persistent but futile efforts.
According to the exhibition text, the movements of the inflatable arms represent two gestures used in American Sign Language (ASL) to attract attention: one involves waving one’s hand or gently patting someone else’s shoulder to draw attention to oneself; the other involves pointing with a finger towards something to then direct the other person’s attention elsewhere. They are gestures used by deaf and hearing people alike, and besides highlighting the ways attention is sought and steered, the work reflects people’s ever-expanding appetite for it – as well as, on the flipside, the frustration felt when such interaction fails.
The artists’ own interpretations aside, it’s true that, for a hearing subject, much of the work’s sensory impact stems from a fear of being silenced. After all, in hearing people’s common parlance, ‘to voice’ and ‘to utter’ is often considered the starting point of self-expression and -assertion. The sense of futility in ATTENTION reveals a situation in which such agency is removed.
Lighter Than Air treats its titular subject, air, as a kind of benchmark, against which Kim and Mader probe the misunderstandings between deaf and hearing people, highlighting what is implied in expressions or gestures that hearing communities take for granted or overlook. Unlike Kim’s earlier works, which often take ASL as the primary subject (for example, in her largescale mural Time Owes Me Rest Again, presented at New York’s Queens Museum in 2022, the hand movements of five ASL words are drawn across the museum’s interior walls), her recent collaborations with Mader tend to visualise situations where deaf subjectivities diverge, sidestepping sign language and words themselves.
Noses are a recurring motif, pertaining to the act of inhaling and exhaling. Unlike the mouth and ears, which are more commonly associated with communication, the nose is an overlooked organ, and the exhibition brings attention to its subtler and more peripheral status. For example, a short puff of air exhaled from one’s nose, though a barely noticeable gesture, can represent a dismissive attitude. In the drawing Running Gag (2024), hundreds of cartoonish noses are arranged in a tidy grid and puff dismissive air. The majority of these noses are in black and white, representing, according to exhibition materials, the 164 delegates who attended the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf, held in Milan in 1880. The congress, following Alexander Graham Bell’s opposition to sign language (the inventor of the telephone was also a prominent figure in deaf education), ruled out signing as an option for teaching deaf people, instead advocating for corrective measures such as speech therapy. Such dismissive attitudes resulted in many countries banning the teaching of sign languages, leading to a century of discrimination for the community. On top of the noses of the 164 delegates are six more rows of noses in hospital green, the idea being that deafness is still widely considered a medical condition as well as a flaw.
Tucked away in an adjacent office space is the two-screen video LOOKY LOOKY (2018). Perhaps this sidelined work should be considered the real starting point of the show, its placement outside the conventional exhibition frame serving as another layer of metaphor. In it, Kim and Mader, each occupying a screen, use nonmanual signals (facial expressions, head positions and so on) to make covert comments on other people, as the subtitles tell us. While facial expressions are often seen by hearing people as a means of conveying emotion, they serve a semantically significant role in many sign languages. (More than half of ASL is conveyed through facial expressions.) In LOOKY LOOKY, Kim, a native signer, and Mader, a learner, demonstrate varying degrees of proficiency in nonmanual signals: Kim uses facial signs dynamically and fluently, while Mader with more deliberation. The facial changes are simultaneously emotive and communicative. They seem ambiguous to nonsigners but actually point towards clear and specific meanings.
Kim has remarked in interviews that ‘I’m always envious of artists who have the privilege to be misunderstood… but I cannot afford to be misunderstood’. This need for precision mirrors her adept use of charts and memes in the exhibited works; she is well versed in the language of these established formats of communication, and how to efficiently appropriate them and to intervene. Kim issues an ‘Access Rider’ to people she works with for avoiding inappropriate terms. In her work there’s a desire to reveal existing conventions and establish new ones, based on what we get to communicate.
Lighter Than Air at White Space, Beijing, 23 May – 27 July
Translated from Chinese (Simplified) by Yuwen Jiang
