Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night

Through July 6

On view
Floors -1, 1, 3, 8

Open: Feb 8–July 6, 2025

In works full of sharp wit and incisive commentary, Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980, Orange County, California) engages sound and the complexities of communication in its various modes. Using musical notation, infographics, and language—both in her native American Sign Language (ASL) and written English—she has produced drawings, videos, sculptures, and installations that often explore non-auditory, political dimensions of sound. In many works, Kim draws directly on the spatial dynamism of ASL, translating it into graphic form. By emphasizing images, the body, and physical space, she upends the societal assumption that spoken languages are superior to those that are signed. 

This exhibition surveys Kim’s entire artistic output to date and features works ranging from early 2010s performance documentation to her recent site-responsive mural, Ghost(ed) Notes (2024), re-created across multiple walls on the eighth floor. Inspired by similarly named works made throughout her career, the exhibition’s title, All Day All Night, points to the vitality Kim brings to her artmaking; she is relentlessly experimental, productive, and dedicated to sharing her Deaf lived experiences with others.

This exhibition is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. The organizing curators are Jennie Goldstein, Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator of the Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art; Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy, Walker Art Center; and Tom Finkelpearl, independent curator; with Rose Pallone, Curatorial Assistant, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Brandon Eng, Curatorial Assistant, Walker Art Center.

Major support for Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night is provided by the Ford Foundation, Teiger Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

       

Significant support is provided by the Korea Foundation.

In New York, the exhibition is sponsored by

Major support is provided by Judy Hart Angelo and the Whitney’s National Committee.

Significant support is provided by Marcia Dunn and Jonathan Sobel, the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation, Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins, and Sueyun and Gene Locks.

Generous support is provided by Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, Further Forward Foundation, Peter H. Kahng, the Samsung Foundation of Culture, and Sonya Yu.

Additional support is provided by Jessica and Marwan Bitar, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Freedman Family, Girlfriend Fund, Suzanne McFayden, Alice and Manu Sareen, Lisa Perry/Onna House, Gina H. Sohn and Gregory P. Lee, Jackson Tang, and an anonymous donor.

Black and white cover with "Whitney," "Christine Sun Kim," and "Look Think Create Activity Guide" in bold and handwritten fonts.
Christine Sun Kim Activity Guide

Activity Guide

An activity guide filled with projects that Kim made with the Whitney's Education Department. The projects respond to works in the exhibition that you can enjoy during your visit!

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Three Tables III (AGB, HPA, DTS), 2020

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In Three Tables III (AGB, HPA, DTS) Kim elongates and arranges musical notes to resemble both musical staffs and dining tables, visually stacking them as examples of ongoing and historical distress experienced by members of the Deaf community. The bottom table, labeled “dinner table syndrome” (DTS for short), refers to the isolation many Deaf people experience when sharing meals with hearing family members who have not learned to sign. The middle table, labeled “hearing people anxiety,” describes feelings of fear or frustration caused by cultural or language insensitivities of hearing people. The disastrous impact of inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) on Deaf culture looms over the other tables. Bell agitated for the intermarriage of Deaf and hearing people with the aim of eliminating deafness in children and fought to eradicate sign language education in favor of oralism, or lip reading. By merging the “legs” of Bell’s table with the others, Kim argues that his eugenicist ideas helped to create the conditions of the other two.

Christine Sun Kim, Three Tables III (AGB, HPA, DTS), 2020

Abstract drawing with three nested rectangles. Text reads "Alexander Graham Bell," "Hearing People Anxiety," and "Dinner Table Syndrome."
Abstract drawing with three nested rectangles. Text reads "Alexander Graham Bell," "Hearing People Anxiety," and "Dinner Table Syndrome."

Christine Sun Kim, Three Tables III (AGB, HPA, DTS), 2020. Charcoal on paper, 58 1/4 × 58 1/4 in. (148 × 148 cm). Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. University purchase, Bixby Fund, 2023. © Christine Sun Kim

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Art gallery room with six abstract black and white framed artworks on white walls, wooden floor, and a simple bench in the center.
Art gallery room with six abstract black and white framed artworks on white walls, wooden floor, and a simple bench in the center.

Installation view of Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, February 8-July 6, 2025). From left to right: Degrees of Deaf Rage in Everyday Situations, 2018; Degrees of Institutional Deaf Rage, 2018; Degrees of Deaf Rage While Traveling, 2018; Degrees of Deaf Rage within Educational Settings, 2018; Degrees of Deaf Rage Concerning Interpreters (Terps), 2018; Degrees of My Deaf Rage in the Art World, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz

Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night
Floor 8

Learn more about selected works from artists and curators.

View guide
Gallery with two abstract paintings featuring black and white wave patterns on a black wall, wooden floor, and track lighting.
Gallery with two abstract paintings featuring black and white wave patterns on a black wall, wooden floor, and track lighting.

Installation view of Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, February 8-July 6, 2025). Mural: Prolonged Echo, 2023. From left to right: Long Echo, 2022; Long Echo, 2022. Photograph by Ron Amstutz

Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night
Floor 3

Learn more about selected works from artists and curators.

View guide
Abstract drawing with three nested rectangles. Text reads "Alexander Graham Bell," "Hearing People Anxiety," and "Dinner Table Syndrome."
Abstract drawing with three nested rectangles. Text reads "Alexander Graham Bell," "Hearing People Anxiety," and "Dinner Table Syndrome."

Christine Sun Kim, Three Tables III (AGB, HPA, DTS), 2020. Charcoal on paper, 58 1/4 × 58 1/4 in. (148 × 148 cm). Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. University purchase, Bixby Fund, 2023. © Christine Sun Kim

Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night
Floor 1

Learn more about selected works from artists and curators.

View guide

In the News

“Christine Sun Kim shines light on Deaf culture and measures sonic experience beyond the ear.” —The New York Times

“Kim’s Whitney survey is the first major museum show to allow an artist confronting disability to be as expansive as she is…” —Art in America

“...pushes the bounds of language and upends notions about how we connect with one another.” —The Wall Street Journal

“...explores the social currency of sound and its exclusionary effects.” —SSENSE

“...feels thorough, insightful and composed…” —The Guardian

“...fascinating and thought-provoking as it is expansive.” —Artnet News

“...like a kind of revenge on a society that has long passed over disabled artists… revenge at its most gripping.” —New York Magazine

“...groundbreaking exhibition – utilizing sound, language, and the nuances and challenges of communication…” —Forbes

“New Yorkers, don’t miss Christine Sun Kim’s first museum survey…”  —AnOther

“...perceptive, poetic, humorous, and political.”  —Ocula

“...expresses how sound operates in society as social currency and deconstructs the politics of sound in a witty manner.”  —The Korea Herald

“...a homecoming of sorts…” —Robb Report

“...the expansive retrospective shines a light on Kim’s exploration of Deaf lived experiences…”  —Hypebeast

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.