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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (^- Unless otherwise credited).

Show Seen: Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night, Whitney Museum, February 8 to September 28, 2025.

My look at the 4 summer blockbusters mounted here in 2025 continues with the second of two must-see shows at The Whitney: Christine Sun Kim’s landmark All Day All Night was up concurrently with Amy Sherald; American Sublime. I began this series with a look at Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers at MoMA, where Jack Whitten: The Messenger was installed on 6.

Degrees of My Deaf Rage in the Art World, 2018 Charcoal and oil pastel on paper

Detail.

“Landmark?” All Day All Night is the first major museum Retrospective devoted to the work of a younger Disabled Artist in NYC in my memory.

As I’ve said more than once, Disabled Artists continue to be THE most overlooked Artists in the world. Why? I can’t figure it out. “Inclusion” has been the headline in the Art world since 1989, yet, the Disabled continue to be left behind. Credit is due to the Whitney for having a long-standing relationship with Christine Sun Kim (B.1980), who is deaf, going back to 2007, when she worked there fresh out of grad school as an educator. During her tenure, she began giving tours in ASL (American Sign Language) for the deaf. In 2025, the Whitney & the Walker Arts Center (who also have a long-standing relationship with Ms. Kim) mounted the early mid-career Retrospective Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night, featuring works “full of sharp wit and incisive commentary,” per the press release. Indeed.

Gallery Cards include Braille. I can count on one hand how often I’ve seen this in every other show I’ve ever visited.

Come to think of it, I can’t even recall an NYC museum Retrospective of one of the more established Disabled Contemporary Artists like Chuck Close, Frida Kahlo, or Yayoi Kusama this century¹. I’ve been scouring my records and racking my brain to come up with one. If you know of one, please let me know. Among other younger Artists, I think the Japanese Artist Mari Katayama may well be the next Disabled Artist to receive NYC museum attention.

Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, ATTENTION, 2022, Kinetic Sculpture, Nylon, locally sourced rock, two blowers, and control board. From the Audio Guide- “This large, moving sculpture includes two inflatable bright-red nylon arms extending from opposite gallery walls toward a jagged rock on the floor between them. One nylon arm has been sewn such that it is reaching its pointer finger out toward the rock, its four other fingers pulled into its palm. The other reaches with an entirely outstretched hand, its palm toward the floor. Both are larger-than-life and are propelled into an intermittent flapping movement by air-blowers mounted high on the walls of the gallery space. When the blowers are off, the arms drift down onto the floor. When the blowers are on, the hands repeatedly dance and brush the rough surface of the locally-sourced rock on the floor of the gallery.” Continued.

ATTENTION Audio Guide continues- “In ASL, one common method of getting someone’s attention involves waving with your palm downward in another person’s field of vision.”

ATTENTION. Audio Guide continues, “Alternatively deaf people often tap each other on the shoulder to get their attention. In this kinetic sculpture, by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, the stone is shaped so as to suggest being eroded by the fingers’ touch, alluding to the process of “trying to get one’s attention or bring attention to something forever.”

The 6 works in the Rage series. Seen at the 2019 Whitney Biennial were reinstalled All Day All Night along 3 walls of a room.

The same series seen in All Day All Night in 2025.

I discovered Christine Sun Kim at the 2019 Whitney Biennial where I found her work a showstopper. Raymond Pettibon came to mind, as another Artist who works with words and images on paper, but her Rage series is much more personal (as she explains in the video below). It stood out as completely from somewhere else in the show and it stayed with me to this day.

Christine Sun Kim, circled in the sliver dress, lower left, Signing at the 2020 Super Bowl.

Ms. Kim is, perhaps, most well-known to the general public for her appearance at the 2020 Super Bowl where she Signed the “America the Beautiful” and the National Anthem, though her performance was cut on TV leaving her frustrated. She spoke out about it in a subsequent Op-Ed in The New York Times.

Degrees of Deaf Rage in Everyday Situations, 2018 Charcoal and oil pastel on paper

Detail.

I’m hoping that All Day All Night will be the beginning of increased attention for Disabled Artists, and not an isolated event.

Here’s Christine Sun Kim to give you a personally guided tour of All Day All Night  full of additional insights I didn’t get the benefit of during my visits-

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “No Words” by Denny Laine (who was born mostly deaf and relied on hearing aids when he performed) & Sir Paul McCartney, and included on the Wings alum Band on the Run-

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