Sonia Boyce MBE is a British Afro-Caribbean artist whose work is represented in the permanent collections of Arts Council England and Tate Modern. Her video Exquisite Cacophony (which debuted at the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale) documents an improvisational performance featuring vocalist Elaine Mitchener and rapper Astronautalis. The result is somewhere between a casual conversation, a poetry slam, and a performance about the insufficiency of language. She is a professor at Middlesex University and Professor of Black Art and Design at University of the Arts London.
Christine Sun Kim is a California-born, Berlin-based artist who was born Deaf. She holds multiple MFAs, has been an artist-in-residence at Whitney Museum, and has exhibited at MoMA PS1, MoMA, Frieze Projects (London), and the New Museum. Kim critiques what she calls “sound etiquette”—the social expectation that Deaf people should navigate a hearing world quietly and discreetly. Her four-channel video Close Readings pairs visuals from popular films with sound captions by her Deaf peers, highlighting how sound can be apprehended through gesture and text.
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay is an artist and diarist based in Montréal, whose work contemplates the history of song and the gender of voices. In its North American debut, his video The Last Song shows a singer whose voice undergoes a haunting change, shifting from an adult baritone to a fragile boy soprano in a moment of curiousity and discovery. Nemerofsky Ramsay has exhibited extensively across Canada and Europe, and his work is a part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada and the Kusthistorisches Museum Vienna.
Sound Etiquette 