Christine Sun Kim's "FOR EVER" Fills Mudam's Leir Pavilion with Turquoise ASL Signs and a Shepard Tone

Christine Sun Kim's "FOR EVER" occupies the Henry J. and Erna D. Leir Pavilion at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, reached by a glass corridor that separates visitors from the main building. Inside the chapel-like space, four monumental sculptural canvases in turquoise repeat the American Sign Language sign for "forever," a gesture that starts at the forehead and moves outward. Kim, whose practice usually favors black and white and strong contrasts, here uses color associated with Deaf culture to make deafness something encountered rather than explained. The sign recurs throughout the installation, from translucent foil window treatments to the canvases, which stretch, fold, and rise across the architecture. A soundscape made with longtime collaborator, musician Matt Karmil, introduces a Shepard tone, an auditory illusion of endless ascent, played through an analogue medium whose physical traces accumulate as the work repeats, so the promise of endless repetition carries gradual deterioration. Kim's practice has long examined sound as registered through movement, vibration, objects, and the body. The work weighs historical suppression of sign languages and medical framings of deafness against the idea that Deafness is not a problem to be solved, arguing against erasure and presenting endurance as an active process sustained through repetition. Installation views are dated 2026–27 and photographed by Mareike Tocha.