Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night

The American Sign Language signs for “all day” and “all night”—which visualize the movement of the sun rising over the horizon and then dipping below it—create the profile of this shaped raw canvas. Kim purposefully left the surface unpainted to call attention to how, as she has explained, “An empty canvas is defined by its parameters (or limits).” The large-scale work presents a kind of opening: without color, line, or depicted narrative, its outlines become a space for imagining the mix of freedom and limits offered by these two signs and phrases.