Artwork Details
- Title
- America the Beautiful
- Artist
- Date
- 2020
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- overall: 58 1⁄4 × 58 1⁄4 in. (148 × 148 cm) frame: 60 3⁄4 × 60 3⁄4 in. (154.3 × 154.3 cm)
- Copyright
- © 2020, Christine Sun Kim. Courtesy of the artist and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase and purchase through the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and through the Julia D. Strong Endowment
- Mediums Description
- charcoal on paper
- Keywords
- Allegory — place — America
- Object — written matter — sheet music
- Object Number
- 2021.31.2
Artwork Description
In 2020, Kim was invited to be the American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter for that year's Super Bowl, performing these two patriotic songs alongside pop star Demi Lovato and gospel singer Yolanda Adams. Kim's monumental charcoal score drawings, made later that year, reflect her careful preparation. The graphic staff lines, clustered notes, and reordered, spatialized lyrics map her ASL translation, designed to match the singer's rhythmic and dynamic range with her own. The compositional arrangement and word choice also reveal Kim's continued engagement with this moment and material, conveying a perspective that is both critical and hopeful. This intentional historical positioning is further articulated in the written artist statement that she asks be shown with this work whenever possible.
Kim felt conflicted around the Super Bowl invitation. Intended as a gesture of patriotic support for disability visibility and intersectional solidarity, her appearance also pointed to gaps between promised and actual equity. These subsequent drawings, scaled to the human body, ask us all to consider our relationship to these songs, their histories and their promises.
Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies, 2023
Exhibitions
