Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night
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Christine Sun Kim Exhibition Catalog
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Artist and activist Christine Sun Kim (US, b. 1980) demonstrates that language is never neutral. With sharp wit and incisive commentary, Kim examines the complexities of communication and exposes the nonauditory and political dimensions of sound. In works spanning drawings, videos, sculptures, and installations, she challenges the assumption that spoken languages hold greater value than those that are signed.
Drawing on the spatial dynamism of American Sign Language (ASL), Kim translates its movement and grammar into graphic form. She employs musical notation, infographics, and text—in both her native ASL and written English—to reconceptualize and reclaim ownership of sound. Through her distinct aesthetic logic, musical dynamic markers evoke the sound of feelings, pie charts present memeified social commentary, and geometric angles measure “degrees of Deaf rage.”
Sound, Kim reminds us, is inextricable from the cultures and spaces that shape it. In her large-scale murals and video installations, she uses the structure of built environments to mirror and amplify the structure of sign language. In her piece Prolonged Echo (2023), for instance, the floor acts like a flat open palm, while the mural on the walls traces the rebounding trajectory of the sign for “echo.” Playing with scale and collaborative potential alike, Kim also engages artists, interpreters, and audiences in performances and sound experiments that further underscore the physicality of language.
Co-organized by the Walker Art Center and the Whitney Museum of American Art, All Day All Night surveys Kim’s entire artistic output from 2011 to 2026. Featuring works ranging from her early career performance documentation to recent site-responsive murals, the exhibition points to the vitality Kim brings to her practice. It is a score in perpetual motion, a testament to her relentless experimentation and the possibilities of Deaf sonic experience.
This exhibition catalogue is available for free as a digital braille and an audio book with visual descriptions. Please use the buttons below to download copies of these versions.
The exhibition is accompanied by a major monograph copublished by the Walker Art Center and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Offering the most comprehensive overview of Christine Sun Kim’s work to date, the catalogue surveys her practice across painting, sculpture, drawing, moving image, performance, large-scale murals, and collaborations with other artists made between 2011 and 2024.
The volume includes an interview between Kim and exhibition curators Tom Finkelpearl (independent curator and writer), Jennie Goldstein (Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator of the Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art), and Pavel S. Pyś (Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy, Walker Art Center); scholarly contributions by Seth Kim-Cohen (Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Jeffrey Yasuo Mansfield (Principal, MASS Design Group and Director of MASS Deaf Space and Disability Justice Lab), and Park McArthur (artist); and an intimate artist timeline compiled by Kim, with Brandon Eng (Curatorial Assistant, Walker Art Center) and Rose Pallone (Curatorial Assistant, Whitney Museum of American Art). A substantial plate section follows these enriching text contributions. Forthcoming in 2025.
Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy, Walker Art Center; Jennie Goldstein, Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator of the Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art; and Tom Finkelpearl, independent curator; with Brandon Eng, Curatorial Assistant, Walker Art Center, and Rose Pallone, Curatorial Assistant, Whitney Museum of American Art.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York: February 8–September 21, 2025
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis: March 27–August 30, 2026
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Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night is co-organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Lead support is provided by the Ford Foundation, Teiger Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
The Walker Art Center’s presentation is made possible with major support from the KHR McNeely Family Foundation, thanks to Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McNeely.
Additional support is provided by Lewis Baskerville, Jan Breyer, the Korea Foundation, Michael Peterman and David Wilson, Idee German Schoenheimer, Susan and Rob White, and Rosina Lee Yue.
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Dates & Tickets
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Fri Mar 27, 2026
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Sun Aug 30, 2026
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