The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), in partnership with LG Electronics, has selected Christine Sun Kim as the participating artist for 《MMCA X LG OLED Series 2026》, a project dedicated to presenting experimental and forward-looking practices in contemporary art.
 
Launched in 2025, the 《MMCA X LG OLED Series》 is a large-scale, site-specific project realized in the Seoul Box, the open exhibition space at MMCA Seoul. Conceived as a collaborative platform exploring the intersection of art and technology, the series examines the experimental potential and expandability of contemporary visual art. In particular, it sheds light on the evolving forms and sensibilities of art in the digital environment, as well as the various ways in which technology influences artistic imagination.
 
The participating artist was selected through a multistage evaluation process that began with recommendations from experts in the field of contemporary visual art, followed by candidate presentations of proposed new commissions developed while taking into consideration the spatial conditions of the Seoul Box, in-depth interviews with the jury, and a comprehensive review.
 
Key evaluation criteria included an experimental approach that actively engages the given physical conditions and technological elements, a critical awareness of contemporary social and cultural contexts, and the artistic capacity to construct a new visual language.

Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980) is a Korean-American artist whose practice examines the structures of communication across a wide range of media, including sound, language, drawing, performance, and video. Grounded in her use of American Sign Language (ASL), her work considers sound not simply as a physical phenomenon but as a socially defined construct. Kim reconfigures sound as a network of social relations intertwined with power, institutions, norms, and accessibility, drawing attention to how speech and non-speech are distributed.
 
Through drawing, graphic notation (a system for translating sound into visual language), and text, she renders visible the often-unseen rules that govern communication, challenging assumptions of a hearing-centered society with a language that combines humor and critique. In her performance and video works, the body and voice function as media in their own right, proposing a new politics of perception that expands sensory experience.
 
Extending beyond the experiences of the Deaf community, her work addresses communication as a universal concern, proposing sensory difference as a site of new perception and relational possibility.

For 《MMCA X LG OLED Series 2026》, the artist presents a large-scale video installation based on animation. At the center of the exhibition is a sculptural screen that conveys the system of ASL. These expressions are visualized through an original graphic notation developed by the artist, drawing on the formal language of motion lines borrowed from classic cartoons and comic books. The visual grammar of motion lines—used to convey speed, direction, and collision—is transposed here as a means of representing the movements of ASL.
 
In this new work, Kim captures the sensation of conflict and confrontational exchange, reflecting the emotional climate of contemporary political and social upheavals amplified through online media. She evokes the condition in which polarized political discourse repeats itself without progress or mutual understanding, presenting it as “the sensation of arguing with a rock.”

Elucidating the grounds for their selection, the jury commented, “Given the Seoul Box’s distinctive characteristics as a space with 14-meter-high ceilings where multiple galleries converge, the artist’s deep understanding of the site is expected to generate strong synergy between the work and the space. As an artist who spatializes language, Christine Sun Kim’s work will have a significant impact.”
 
Kim Sunghee, director of the MMCA, notes, “Christine Sun Kim’s works propose a clear thematic inquiry into the relationship between language and society in a way that is both amusing and open to multilayered interpretation. This project will mark an important turning point in the artist’s expansion into the medium of digital animation.”
 
The exhibition MMCA X LG OLED Series 2026 will run from Friday, 31 July through Sunday, 29 November at MMCA Seoul.

References

• 국립현대미술관 보도자료 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) Press Release)