Ellie Kim, artist name SuperKnova, is a singer, activist, physician and musician. She has released two studio albums, ''American Queers'' and, most recently, ''superuniverse''. As a physician, she is noted for speaking out publicly against non-consensual intersex surgery in infants while working at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.

Education

Kim attended the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

where she studied jazz guitar. She attended Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and graduated with her MD in 2019. She did not attend residency and instead chose to pursue a career in music after graduating.

Music career

Ellie Kim started SuperKnova while in medical school. During this time, she began her gender transition and wrote songs as a form of therapy to process her emotions around coming out. She initially did not plan on releasing them. However, a friend eventually convinced her to put them on

Bandcamp Bandcamp is an American online audio distribution platform founded in 2007 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. On March 2, 2022, Bandcamp ...

. Her first album ''Splendor Dysphoria'' was released on Bandcamp in June 2017. She chose the artist name SuperKnova based on her childhood fascination with space. The name is based on the cosmological phenomenon of a

supernova A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when ...

, the final most energetic explosion before the death of a star. She saw this as an analogy of how she wanted to live life: giving it her all and seeing beauty in the chaos. Her second album American Queers is one of the “all-time best selling transgender albums” on Bandcamp.

Production

Kim is a singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and audio engineer. She writes, produces, records, mixes and masters all of her own music.

Activism

As a physician, Kim has advocated for intersex justice alongside activist

Pidgeon Pagonis Pidgeon Pagonis (born 1986) is an American intersex activist, writer, artist, and consultant. They are an advocate for intersex human rights and against nonconsensual intersex medical interventions. Early life and education Pagonis was born in ...

. On July 23, 2020, Kim became the first physician at Lurie Children’s Hospital to publicly speak out against cosmetic, medically unnecessary surgeries performed on intersex infants without their consent. She advocated for change within Lurie Children's Hospital in collaboration with Dr. Robert Garofalo, division head of Adolescent Medicine. On July 29, 2020, Lurie Children’s hospital formally changed their policy regarding intersex infant surgery and became the first hospital in the United States to do so.

Personal life

Kim is a

genderfluid Non-binary and genderqueer are umbrella terms for gender identities that are not solely male or femaleidentities that are outside the gender binary. Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella, since non-binary people typicall ...

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

woman and uses she/her/hers pronouns.

Appearances in media

SuperKnova's song "Glitter and Blood" appears in Season 1, Episode 2 of Showtime's ''

Work in Progress Work in process (WIP), work in progress (WIP), goods in process, or in-process inventory refers to a company's partially finished goods waiting for completion and eventual sale, or the value of these items. The term is used in supply chain manage ...

''. She also sings a cover of The Beat's "

Mirror in the Bathroom "Mirror in the Bathroom" is a single by British ska band the Beat released as a single in 1980 from their debut album '' I Just Can't Stop It''. It reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart and consequently was their highest charting release i ...

" (produced by

Ethan Stoller Ethan Stoller is an American composer, music editor and producer from Chicago, Illinois. Stoller's first film score was for the independently produced ''Roadrunner'' (dir. Christopher Blasingame) in 2001. Stoller has composed three film scores: ' ...

) that appears in Season 1, Episode 4, the "Bathroom" episode.

Awards

In 2021, SuperKnova's music video for her song "Goals_" was selected to the 44th Asian American International Film Festival in New York City.{{Cite web, url=https://www.aaiff.org/aaiff44/goals_/, access-date=2021-09-21, website=www.aaiff.org, title=Archived copy, archive-date=2021-09-21, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210921183640/https://www.aaiff.org/aaiff44/goals_/, url-status=dead

References

Transgender women musicians American LGBT singers LGBT physicians Intersex rights activists LGBT people from Illinois Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Transgender singers Genderfluid people