Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night

In Palm Reader, Kim and artist Thomas Mader animate American Sign Language (ASL) signs for several words associated with official transactions or processes, including “rule,” “account,” and “principle.” Each uses an ASL fingerspelled letter, or “initialized sign,” which is hit twice on the top and bottom of an open palm illustrated with the design of Kim’s passport pages. The resulting movement, Kim notes, “has a strong sense of officiality or authority—you hit your palm twice like a stamper on an ink pad, and then onto a passport.” The title suggests a technological scanning device that identifies an individual, or a fortune teller, who might determine one’s fate from the lines “stamped” onto a palm.