1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader at Wellcome Collection

17^th April 2025

Christina Yang

Christina Yang

17 April 2025

1880 THAT begins not with a bang, but with a brick. A single piece, etched with the exhibition’s title, hangs fixed at the entrance – part commemorative plaque, part confrontation. It references a historical wound few remember: the 1880 Milan Conference, where sign language was formally rejected in favour of speech-based education for Deaf people. Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, who describe their collaboration as a “family business”, bring their signature spiky humour and conceptual clarity to their first major London show at the Wellcome Collection. Language here represents more than communication; it is home, identity and self-defence. Their works are pointed but playful; sharply critical, yet saturated with equal parts humour and history.

With two oversized, flailing inflatable arms, inflated and deflated on loop, enacting gestures from American Sign Language, ATTENTION (2022) is one of the show’s most eye-catching works. One red arm points toward Parliament, where policy still shapes Deaf lives; the other waves toward the lost site of the Milan conference. Installed just behind F on Eye (2025) –  a quietly tense video where descriptive subtitles replace the ominous horror film score – Attention is a visual SOS, exhausting in its repetition, necessary in its insistence.

Less successful is the recurring motif of the nose, rendered repeatedly in a muted hospital green. In Look Up My Nose (2025), a cluster of fibreglass noses hangs from the ceiling – eerie, clinical and faintly alien. Running Gag (2024) meticulously catalogues the 164 noses of conference participants, arranging them in neat, condescending rows. The shade they share – cool, sterile, unmistakably institutional – mirrors the glass walls of University College Hospital across the street. While the reference to the nose’s importance in French Sign Language is not lost, the visual execution feels overstated; the symbolism is too on-the-nose and ultimately falls flat.

Eventually, the exhibition loops back to its starting point: the brick, unchanged yet somehow heavier in NOT CROSS (2025), a monumental wall spelling out the phrase “I AM NOT CROSS” in bold letters. It’s a clever jab at the dissonance between body language and speech – the kind of thing hearing people say when their expressions tell another story. The gesture veers toward the literal, and the return to the brick motif feels more dutiful than dynamic – yet its sheer scale amplifies the confrontational spirit of 1880 THAT one final time, transforming it into something more tangible. The wall becomes the culmination of the mounting pressure behind it, both in the weight of history and throughout the course of the exhibition.

Christina Yang
Image: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, What’s Left (production still), 2025. Courtesy of the artists and Wellcome Collection. Photo: Benjamin Held.

1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader is at Wellcome Collection from 17^th April until 16^th November 2025. For further information or to book, visit the exhibition’s website here.