Despite living in different cities, Christine Sun Kim, Lauren Ridloff, and Nyle DiMarco have always made time for one another. The best friends and creative confidantes—Kim is a visual artist, Ridloff is an actor, and DiMarco acts, models, and produces—all of whom were born Deaf, have gathered everywhere from Berlin, where Kim lives and works, to France, Los Angeles, and beyond. But earlier this month, their most recent reunion brought them to New York City, for the opening of Kim’s landmark exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
On view through July 6, Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night surveys the entirety of Kim’s 13-year practice and illustrates what it is like to navigate a hearing world as a Deaf person, with an emphasis on the importance of family and community. Spanning the Whitney’s eighth and third floors, stairwell, and lobby galleries, the show features a mixture of drawings, infographics, videos, paintings, performance, sculptures, and large-scale installations. It is an exploration of what exists outside of audibility (illustrated via a large mural of four-line staffs that arch over and buckle under musical notes). Kim's trademark wit abounds as she explores the politics of sound, and the visual-spatial modality of her native ASL.
In their own work, Ridloff and DiMarco similarly seek to show the depth and diversity of Deaf culture. They craft stories about the Deaf experience that are at once specific and universal. After getting her start on Broadway, Ridloff, a former teacher, became a season regular on The Walking Dead before portraying Makkari, a speedster superhero who is Deaf and has the power to feel soundwaves, in Marvel’s Eternals. Ridloff has also recently finished a book about a Deaf child and his parents, but in the text, the word “Deaf” is notably absent.
DiMarco’s breakthrough began when he won America’s Next Top Model in 2015 followed by Dancing with the Stars in 2016. Although he initially wanted to pursue acting, he soon recognized the lack of opportunities for Deaf actors in Hollywood. Determined to bring more authentic stories about the Deaf experience to the screen, he shifted his focus to behind-the-camera work and founded a production company that brings together crews with Deaf producers and directors. In 2020, DiMarco executive produced the Netflix reality series Deaf U, which follows a group of students at Gallaudet University, his alma mater and the only Deaf university in the world. He most recently co-directed the documentary Deaf President Now!, an Apple TV+ documentary that premiered at Sundance in January. The film recounts the historic 1988 protests at Gallaudet University, which led to the appointment of the university’s first Deaf president, and ultimately contributed to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.
After their reunion in New York, Kim, Ridloff, and DiMarco reconnected to discuss the barriers of access they face as artists and how seeing one another navigate their respective careers has opened new possibilities within their own work.
Christine Sun Kim: My show at the Whitney is a survey of 13 years’ worth of work. [When the show opened] it was the biggest week of my life, aside from when I had my two kids. When you enter the exhibition on the eighth floor, what you first see are my older pieces. Then the space is broken down into themes around family, society, and communication. A lot of people have found the work that is up at the Whitney to be very expansive of what being deaf can be. It’s also great commentary on how I've worked with so many different communities in my career. I don't stay in one place. That's how I navigate life.
I’m often asked who my art is for, but I don't really make work wanting to communicate to certain communities. I want to make work about what interests me. Maybe you've seen my series of pie chart drawings including “Why My Hearing Parents Sign” and “Why My Hearing Partner Signs.” Sometimes I feel like I have to spell things out for people, I have to over-prescribe, and I try not to do it too much. I don't want to educate. My process is usually like, I have this idea, whether it's about my Deaf experience or my Korean American experience, and then I try to find what medium fits that experience, whether that's a drawing on paper or a video. And then I communicate it through the medium.
Nyle DiMarco: The work that you do is not just shifting hearing peoples’ perspectives; I also think it opens up new things within the Deaf world. I grew up fourth generation Deaf and had never been to a gallery that showcased any of your type of work. Your work has changed my relationship with art. I've learned so much about the world. And the work that you do is not preachy, it's not a PSA. It's got this really subtle, beautiful way of conveying certain nuances, which is, I think, key for hearing people to be able to consume it. It’s like a cookie with vegetables inside. It's really powerful and it opens up the possibility for Deaf people to think bigger.
Lauren Ridloff: Christine, as you mentioned, you’re not the first Deaf artist and not the first Deaf artist to have a show. But what you do is you pin down issues and those moments that we experience [in a way that] is mind boggling and so precise. You do that service with humor and wit. We often hear the words “Deaf artist” or “Deaf art.” When any kind of media that I consume says “Deaf” before anything else, I cringe a bit. It's the same with TV shows or movies. I tense up, and I always lean in to go, Are they truly authentically representing us? Is it made by a Deaf person? Is it doing me justice? Is it doing us justice? And is it done right? But with you, Christine, somehow that “Deaf” part of it is dropped. Your experience is almost universal. People can see themselves in your art.
What's really inspiring to me is looking for that within stories in Hollywood. I feel like we need more content out there that can actually show the diaspora of the Deaf experience and the different truths that we all represent.
ND: Obviously we want more Deaf representation. But at the same time, once people have a chance to see your work and my own, hearing people will be able to relate to those stories. They are universal in many ways.
Working in the entertainment industry was never really on my radar. I didn't give it much thought until I had an opportunity come up [to be on] America's Next Top Model and subsequently Dancing with Stars. I had done a little bit of acting prior to that, but those were really my first big introductions to Hollywood. It's funny, I thought that things would come easier to me given the size of my platform, and I thought that auditioning for roles would be much more successful than it was. I was quick to learn that not only is this industry hard, but it's much harder as a Deaf person. And in chatting with writers and directors and producers, it was always the same thing that I heard: They loved my work, and they were very fascinated with working with me, but they didn't know how. The idea of writing a role authentically seemed just unfeasible to them. They didn't know how to bring in Deaf collaborators behind the camera. I saw that Hollywood really needed a shift. Rather than waiting for those phone calls to come, I realized there was an opportunity to make something happen myself. So I ended up establishing my own production company to spark those nuanced stories and to be able to support the disabled community as a whole in telling diverse tales. The first project I ever did was Deaf U on Netflix. I was very lucky to be able to produce that docuseries that followed six incredible and very different students from Gallaudet University, the only Deaf university in the world.
LR: I've always had the need to express myself. I was born into a family of artists. My father's a musician. My mother is an artist. My sister is a dancer. My goal was to be a novelist, but I fell into acting. I got my start on Broadway the same way a lot of Deaf female actors do, which [was in a production of] Children of a Lesser God. Broadway isn't inviting, per se, for Deaf people—there’s not a lot of signing. It's a visual medium. There’s no captioning or subtitling on Broadway; you’d think there would be. The director that I worked with on Children of a Lesser God had that mindset. He wanted to normalize captioning and accessibility within the theater in New York City specifically. And he did. He made it accessible for my show, and we were hoping that that would initiate something, that we would start a movement. And it seemed like it just kind of dissipated. I was a bit hesitant about whether I wanted to continue acting but I ended up with a Tony nomination for my role in the play, so I thought, hey, maybe I should try this.
I was actually in Harper's Bazaar a few years ago as one of Ava DuVernay’s people to watch. I feel like Hollywood at that point was motivated and wanted to tell different stories as well as universal stories through a different lens. I was so excited, but Hollywood just didn’t know how. As a Deaf person, I am just learning how to tell my own stories, and that is why there is so much value in my relationship with you both, Christine and Nyle. You’re my sounding boards and you are two of the few people within my Deaf community that have a large platform.
CSK: I've gone through my career finding that there are other Deaf artists but that there wasn't a community actually in place because everyone as a Deaf artist is so different. There were so few of us that it felt like there was a bit of a scarcity mindset instead of a community mindset, so the art world felt hard to navigate at times.
It wasn't like I was seeking you two out, but I feel like we just naturally came together. For me, having you in my life is amazing because you’ve fucking reinvented yourselves over and over again. It's amazing to watch the two of you go through your trajectories from my corner cheering you on. I’m mindful of the fact that we are in different fields, but I know that we're asking the same questions, and if you found the answers to our same questions, then it helps me answer them for myself. It's nice to be able to support each other as Deaf people in the art industry and the entertainment industry. There's a lot of overlap for the three of us.
ND: I think in a perfect world, we wouldn't need to reinvent ourselves. In a perfect world, we would have those career paths that we could just fall into and hone. We do have to work to provide other people opportunities, which means wearing a lot of hats. And that's not me complaining. I love what I do, but it is quite interesting how our work in navigating this world is a constant push. The three of us have to constantly push boundaries and force perspectives to change.
A film I co-directed, Deaf President Now!, just premiered at Sundance. It [tells the story of] a protest at Galludet University in 1988 that sparked a movement. In an effort to change 124 years of paternalism, the students decided they wanted a Deaf university president. That protest and subsequent movement ended up giving rise to the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act [in 1990]. For that project, we hired Deaf producers. We hired a Deaf lens producer, specifically, to provide a different perspective and to really bring in the nuance behind the camera so that it was very apparent to the viewers at home. Being able to work with a lens producer in my own language really changed the way that the film shaped up.
CSK: I think that on a deep level, you are also archiving Deaf history, which is continually morphed and disappeared. It hasn't been well documented. It's been erased. It hasn't been archived.
Our friend Sinead Burke often speaks about how disability visibility in the media is good, but beyond that, there's still work to do. She asks, what's next? The past 10 years have had so much visibility around disability and Deafness, but it's really easy to show up, be seen, be the hot thing, and then disappear. So how can we go beyond visibility? The work that you both do is amazing. You’re building teams to tell these stories. You’re producing. And it's important to bring authenticity into the spaces that we're in as much as possible. This way visibility becomes no longer needed. It becomes like an old question that we've long answered. I can't wait to get to that point.
LR: I want to tell true, authentic stories that include Deaf people. When I was on The Walking Dead, I loved how much I learned about accessibility and the power of diversity and representation within storytelling. I wasn't the only deaf character on that show; my character had a sister who was also Deaf, but their journeys were completely different. I was portraying somebody who was born Deaf, whereas my character’s sister lost her ability to hear over time. Her journey was about hearing loss, which diminished her chance at survival. Mine was about how my Deafness helped me survive. That story introduced the idea of a spectrum within the Deaf community and Deafness in general.
Then I played Makkari, who was a speedster in Eternals, [a movie] within the Marvel franchise, which was a lot of fun. But I was the only person in that cast who had a scene that focused on explaining how they used their superpower. None of the other characters had to do that for some reason. Some characters had guns that just appeared out of their hands and other superheroes could change matter just by touching it. But nobody challenged that.
After that, I was a co-producer for a TV series that unfortunately was shelved after the writer’s strike occurred. But that experience, where I got to sit at the table where decisions were made, gave me insight into how to run a show, how money really applies to accessibility. Sometimes I felt like accessibility was more of a marketing tactic than anything else. That's one thing that the three of us talk about often. How did you do this? How do you work around this? How did you get other organizations or foundations to agree to certain things? You two are my sounding board as I navigate through Hollywood.
CSK: I think both of you have shown me what is possible. If I can see that it can be done, then I'm more motivated. But if I don't have an example to look to, I lose my motivation. Having the two of you be living proof that I can see with my own two eyes has been so life changing for me.
