Christian Bumala

Christian Bumala studies sound and its representation in modern art, with a particular focus on the human voice. Drawing from disability studies and transhistorical approaches, his research considers the affordances of speech and song as visual objects. His broader interests encompass language, folklore, music, and public space in American art from approximately 1800 to today, while minding the interstices between these categories.

Christian received his BA in French and Linguistics from UCLA and his MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago, where he received the Department of Art History’s award for best Master’s thesis for his study of Christine Sun Kim and the visual characteristics of sound art since the 1960s. His writing will appear in the forthcoming edited volume by Christine Mehring and Orianna Cacchione, Monochrome Multitudes: Art of One Color from Albers to Zeisler (University of Chicago Press). Christian’s past museum experience includes the Art Institute of Chicago, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Hammer Museum, the de Young Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.