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An exhibition and programme ‘Disarming Language: disability, communication, rupture’ at Tallinn Art Hall

Disarming Language: disability, communication, rupture

14.12.2o19–24.02.2020

Tallinn Art Hall, Vabaduse Väljak str 8

An exhibition and programme curated by Christine Sun Kim and Niels Van Tomme

The “Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities” (2006) is an international human rights treaty of the United Nations aiming to protect the rights of people with disabilities through language and law. Building upon the treaty, this exhibition and programme looks at ways in which novel conceptions of language and communication are informed and enhanced by disability. The project, in bringing together artists, graphic designers, writers, and activists, establishes a number of critical vantage points that imagine disability beyond a stigmatised “condition”. Its purpose lies in imagining new conceptual and experiential frameworks that use language and communication in innovative ways – through, with, and beyond disability – advancing a radically more inclusive point of view past limiting ableist perspectives and possibilities.

Christine Sun Kim uses the medium of sound in performance and drawing to investigate her relationship with spoken languages and her aural environment. Selected exhibitions and performances include solo shows at White Space Beijing, London’s Carroll/Fletcher gallery, and De Appel, Amsterdam, alongside group shows at Serralves Museum, Sound Live Tokyo, the Berlin and Shanghai Biennials, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Rubin Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 in New York. Kim was awarded TED and MIT Media Lab Fellowships.

Niels Van Tomme is the director at ARGOS in Brussels. His exhibitions and programmes have been presented at Akademie der Künste (Berlin), The Kitchen (New York), Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), De Appel (Amsterdam), National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and P! (New York). He was the curator of Bucharest Biennale 7: What are we building down there? His publications include Where Do We Migrate To? (2011), Visibility Machines: Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen (2014), Aesthetic Justice: Intersecting Artistic and Moral Perspectives (2015) and Muntadas: About Academia: Activating Artifacts (2017).