All Day All Night | Christine Sun Kim

Artist and activist Christine Sun Kim demonstrates that language is never neutral. With sharp wit and incisive commentary, Kim examines the complexities of communication and exposes the nonauditory and political dimensions of sound. In works spanning drawings, videos, sculptures, and installations, she challenges the assumption that spoken languages hold greater value than those that are signed. Drawing on the spatial dynamism of American Sign Language (ASL), Kim translates its movement and grammar into graphic form.

She employs musical notation, infographics, and text—in both her native ASL and written English—to reconceptualize and reclaim ownership of sound. Through her distinct aesthetic logic, musical dynamic markers evoke the sound of feelings, pie charts present memeified social commentary, and geometric angles measure “degrees of Deaf rage.” Sound, Kim reminds us, is inextricable from the cultures and spaces that shape it. In her large-scale murals and video installations, she uses the structure of built environments to mirror and amplify the structure of sign language.

Co-organized by the Walker Art Center and the Whitney Museum of American Art, All Day All Night surveys Kim’s entire artistic output from 2011 to 2026. Featuring works ranging from her early career performance documentation to recent site-responsive murals, the exhibition points to the vitality Kim brings to her practice. It is a score in perpetual motion, a testament to her relentless experimentation and the possibilities of Deaf sonic experience.

Walker Art Center
725 Vineland Pl
Minneapolis, MN 55403

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday–Sunday: 10 am–5 pm
Thursday: 10 am–9 pm
Monday: Closed