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American Herstory: Echoes of Silence: The Art of Christine Sun Kim
“I was born deaf and I was taught to believe that sound wasn’t a part of my life”, says Christine Sun Kim in her 2015 TED talk. The artist, born in California and currently based in Berlin, instead discovers that sound is a constant in her life, manifesting in many different forms. With her work, Kim aims to provide the public with a personal representation of sound, using drawings, videos, sculptures, and installations.
Telling the story of her career so far is the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, in collaboration with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, with the exhibition Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night.
The exhibition, which will be open until July 6, 2025, marks an important return for Kim to the Whitney, where she had previously participated in the 2019 Biennale. As the artist explained during the exhibition preview, this event represents a "homecoming," as it also recalls the period when Kim worked as an educator at the museum from 2007 to 2014, contributing to the development of tools to support visits for a Deaf audience.
This exhibition is not only a reflection by the artist on sound, but also an invitation to raise awareness about the importance of inclusivity in cultural institutions. Kim aims to highlight the lack of resources for the Deaf community in places like museums, where access to and engagement with works of art are not always guaranteed for everyone. With her work, she criticizes a system that is not inclusive. For example, in Degrees of My Deaf Rage in the Art World (2018), the artist graphically represents her anger towards an environment that feels hostile, or at least unwelcoming, towards Deaf people: “museums with zero deaf programming (and no deaf docents/educators),” “curators who think it’s fair to split my salary fee with interpreters,” and so on.
Christine Sun Kim's work is a continuous "sound chase”, as sound influences her daily life and she wants to make it tangible and communicate it to others, even through unconventional methods. Her journey finds its purpose in a statement by the artist: “I wanted to envision what sound actually would look like in a physical way.” Kim uses a variety of expressive languages—musical notation, infographics, American Sign Language (ASL), and written English—to bring this vision to life.
The title of the exhibition, All Day All Night, is inspired by the 2012 works All Day and All Night, in which Kim explores the movement and flow of time through ASL gestures. In All Day, a large arc represents the movement of the hand as Kim forms the ASL sign for "all day," capturing the trajectory of the sun in the sky. This gesture can be performed at different speeds to express varying durations. In the complementary work All Night, Kim explores the night with a similar reflection on time and gesture. In 2023, the work All Day All Night, a shaped raw canvas, continues this theme, depicting the movement of the sun rising and setting.
The condition of deafness is not transient, but a condition that defines the entire day and night of a Deaf person. This leads her to reflect on the shortcomings of a world that is not designed for a Deaf person and is still far from becoming one. On the first floor, the kinetic sculpture Attention (2022), created in collaboration with Thomas Mader, highlights the daily struggle of a Deaf person trying to attract attention. The work features two inflatable nylon arms extending from the gallery walls towards a rock on the floor, simulating gestures used in sign language to capture someone's attention. The stone, marked by the touch of fingers, represents the constant attempt to draw attention to something important. A central point of the exhibition is the exploration of the concept of Echo, which lies at the heart of Kim's artistic practice. Works like Prolonged Echo (2023) and A String of Echo Traps (2022) treat echo as the feeling of delay in communication, which for a Deaf person is necessarily filtered through sign language or graphic elements. These works are displayed on the third floor of the museum, while the rest of the exhibition primarily takes place on the eighth floor, were visitors can also find one of Kim's most recent and powerful works: Ghost(ed) Notes (2024), a mural whose title plays with the musical concept of "ghost notes"—notes that produce little sound—and the social phenomenon of "ghosting." In this work, Kim establishes a parallel with the condition of Deaf people, who are often excluded from social interactions. The lines of the staff seem to "avoid" the notes, just as society tends to ignore or "ghost" Deaf people. Kim's staff is made up of four lines instead of the traditional five, a reference to the sign language gesture representing the staff with four fingers.
In her work, Christine Sun Kim also finds a strong dimension of empowerment. Today, there is often talk of how women are deprived of their voice, but history is not made only of voices; history is written.
Kim also challenges the societal assumption that spoken languages are superior to signed languages. “By emphasizing images, the body, and physical space, she upends the societal assumption that spoken languages are superior to those that are signed,” reads the exhibition's press release.
Christine Sun Kim's work is a call for connection—connection through sound, sign language, writing, and art itself. The artist provides a space for the public to experience the world from a perspective often overlooked, giving voice to the Deaf experience in a world that is still learning to listen.
Sources:
D’Souza A. (2025, February 14). An Artist Expands the Landscape of Sound. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/arts/design/christine-sun-kim-artist.html
Kim, C. Sun. The Enchanting Music of Sign Language. YouTube video. Published May 5, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Euof4PnjDk
Kinsella E. (2025, February 7). Christine Sun Kim’s Landmark Whitney Survey Translates the Deaf Experience Into Art. Artnet. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/christine-sun-kim-all-day-all-night-whitney-museum-2606537
Whitney Museum of American Art. Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night. https://whitney.org/exhibitions/christine-sun-kim-all-day-all-night
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