People Who Stutter Create: Stuttering Can Create Time

Mar 20–Aug 25, 2024

Graphic with text in three languages discussing how stuttering can create time.
Graphic with text in three languages discussing how stuttering can create time.

People Who Stutter Create (Jia Bin, Delicia Daniels, JJJJJerome Ellis, Conor Foran, Kristel Kubart), Stuttering Can Create Time, 2023. Inkjet print on vinyl. Courtesy the artist

People Who Stutter Create: Stuttering Can Create Time is part of Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing and is presented at 95 Horatio Street, on the facade of the building across the street from the Whitney and the south end of the High Line.

The collective People Who Stutter Create (PWSC) contends that stuttering (also called stammering) can create room for deep listening and collaboration. Through repeated sounds, prolonged sounds, and blocks with no sound, the group aims to describe social reality while also being able to change it through the act of description. For its first project, PWSC mobilizes the Whitney’s exhibition billboard as a place to publicly celebrate the transformational space of dysfluency, a term that can encompass stuttering/stammering and other communication differences such as aphasia, Tourette’s, and dysarthria.

PWSC comprises five artists who stutter/stammer: Born in China, Jia Bin is a US-based doctoral student in communication sciences and disorders. With a deep commitment to empowerment and inclusion, Bin envisions innovative projects to spotlight the beauty and power of stuttered speech, fostering a more supportive world for those who stutter in any language. Delicia Daniels is a poet and activist. An assistant professor of creative writing, her debut poetry collection, The Language We Cry In, was published in 2017. JJJJJerome Ellis is a multi-hyphenate artist. Through music, text, performance, video, and photography, they research relationships among Blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time. Conor Foran is a London-based Irish creative practitioner. Through his Dysfluent practice, he considers how stammering intersects with creativity and how art and design can instigate social change. Kristel Kubart is a speech-language pathologist who stutters and has cerebral palsy. She works with children, teens, and adults who stutter, and helps them embrace their stuttering, stutter more freely, and learn to trust their voice.

Concept/Creative Lead: JJJJJerome Ellis
Design: Conor Foran
Text: Jia Bin, Delicia Daniels, JJJJJerome Ellis, Conor Foran, Kristel Kubart
Translations: Angelica Bernabe, Jia Bin, James Harrison Monaco, Argenis Ovalles, Wendy Palomeque
Typography consultant: Zoe (Yu) Cui
Typefaces: Dysfluent Mono by Conor Foran and Glow Sans TC by Celestial Phineas

This work is part of a series of public art installations organized by the Whitney in partnership with TF Cornerstone and High Line Art.

People Who Stutter Create: Stuttering Can Create Time is part of Outside the Box programming, which is supported by a generous endowment from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation.


A note from the Artists

We wish to thank Ina Lalic, Christopher Constantino, Caryn Herring, Noura Embabi, Hallie Mintz, Friends: The National Association of Young People Who Stutter, Róisín McManus, Emma Alpern, Shreyas Chavan, Aidan Sank, Sara MacIntyre, Mary McLoughlin, Barry Yeoman, Maya Chupkov, Mandy Rodstrom, Chaya Goldstein, Patrick Campbell, Voon Pang, John Hendrickson, Jenny McGuire, and all the members of stuttering communities who helped shape this billboard.

We honor the voices of all people who stutter. And we honor the ways people who stutter and their allies take care of each other. We've compiled a (very incomplete!) list of some stuttering advocates we’d like to uplift. 

View the advocate list


Public Art

View more site-specific artworks outside the Whitney’s walls.


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.