Joseph Grigely

“St. Cecilia,” Museum of Contemporary Art

Time Out Chicago / Issue 198 : Dec 11–17, 2008

A sign-language interpreter at a concert must communicate expression, sound and lyrics to fans who can’t hear a single note. Deaf artist Joseph Grigely’s poignant, playful pieces enable hearing viewers to imagine what it’s like to experience music this way, bridging the gap between seeing and hearing.

In Grigely’s installation St. Cecilia, two videos of the same choir play side by side. On one screen, the group sings a Christmas carol; in the other, it sings the same tune but with absurd lyrics composed by Grigely (“Reevy Stevens coughs up blue / Now you see our mind”). The new verses cleverly reveal the perils of mistaken lipreading: To a deaf viewer, the singers’ mouths appear to form the same syllables in both videos. Songs Without Words highlights musicians’ expressiveness and intensity, which—Grigely writes in the accompanying wall text—allow him to continue enjoying music. The series of prints reproduces newspaper photographs of open-mouthed choirs and a conductor raising his arms as a look of ecstasy passes over his face—images that are powerful despite their silence. They reflect what Grigely describes as the difference between “how sound looks and how sound sounds.” Since hearing viewers only pay attention to the latter, the difference probably escapes them until they see his work.

In his most compelling video installation, Remembering is a difficult job but somebody has to do it (2005), Grigely reviews the memories of sound he retained before going deaf at the age of ten. As he sings and hums the theme song from Gilligan’s Island, he conveys yet another experience most of us can’t fathom: how precious even trivial aural memories become when one can’t have any more.

-CW