Kulsuma Monica Khatoon is a profoundly deaf Muslim artist. She wears two cochlear implants which give her access to sounds which she could not otherwise ‘naturally’ hear. Due to the limitations of this sonic range, her understanding of the English language can appear delayed and her speech can often be unclear for others to understand. Therefore, to communicate, she lip-reads and uses a fingerspell sign language alphabet to both ‘understand’ what is said and to be ‘understood’ by others.

 

 

Can You Say That Again?  looks at the relationship between sound and sight, between speech and text, between hearing and reading. The work foregrounds Kulsuma’s disability and her daily struggle to be understood.