As part of the exhibition Drawing in the Continuous Present (March 10–May 22, 2022), The Drawing Center enlisted artist Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980, Orange County, California; lives and works in Berlin) to create a site-specific wall drawing. Kim’s work is rooted in the her personal experience with language, and she is best known for black charcoal line drawings that employ humor to engage with deeply serious subject matter: violence and discrimination against the Deaf community in a predominantly hearing world.

In Hand Palm (Three Echo Traps), Kim utilizes the notion of an echo as a metaphor for the relationship between a sign language interpreter and a Deaf individual. In American Sign Language, the word “echo” is signed by tapping the fingertips of one hand on the palm of the other, which is held perpendicular as if it were the reflecting surface, and then moving it in its opposite direction in a smooth, continuous motion. Through the visualization of the word “echo” as three discrete sound waves bouncing across the walls of the stairwell, and with the words “hand” and “palm” appearing on slants and angles or flipped upside down, Kim creates a disorienting sense of circularity that suggests the distortions and reverberations of meaning and intention.