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# Marking the Winter Solstice with a Shout at the Whitney Museum
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/winter-solstice-performance-whitney-museum/
- Published: 2017-12-19T21:05:11.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:25:46.000Z
- Description: Celebrate the winter solstice with Sibyl Kempson's rituals tuning in to the sun.
- Author: Laila Pedro
- Tags: Art, Events, Whitney Museum of American Art, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:30(2016, 2017, part 3)

![Sibyl Kempson, "12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens," Spring Equinox, March 20, 2016, at the Whitney Museum of American Art (photo © Paula Court)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/12/sibyl-kempson-12-shouts-whitney-lead.jpg)

Sibyl Kempson, from the series 12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens, “Spring Equinox,” March 20, 2016, at the Whitney Museum of American Art (photo © Paula Court)

This statement sounds crazy in 2017, but it’s true: The darkest day of the year is yet to come. That will be Thursday, December 21, the winter solstice, which brings the year’s longest night and shortest day. It’s a powerful moment in any number of religious and spiritual traditions — it may be the moment of truest, deepest blackness, but it also marks the beginning of the turn back to the sun. White-night and fire-filled holidays abound, community is celebrated, faces and intentions are turned willfully toward the light. It’s a time for evocative contrasts and dynamic, life-affirming gatherings.

At the Whitney Museum, Sibyl Kempson will [present the eighth “Shout”](http://whitney.org/Events/SibylKempson2017WinterEquinox?ref=hyperallergic.com) in her cycle of iterative equinox and solstice performances, [*12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens*](http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/SibylKempson?ref=hyperallergic.com); this one titled, appropriately, “Winter Solstice.” The all-day performance, per the official description, is a celebratory and contemplative engagement with the shifting dynamics of darkness and light: “As the day unfolds, the theater gradually transitions into four distinct scenic landscapes. Each encourages the viewer to contemplate the interplay between internal and external worlds.” A bell will ring at both the precise astronomical solstice (11:28 am) and again at sunset (4:32 pm), marked by a ceremony.

In dark times, it’s compelling — not to say illuminating — to be reminded that, whether we know it yet or not, we are being turned back toward the light.

**When**: Thursday, December 21, 10:30am–6pm  
**Where**: [Whitney Museum](http://whitney.org/?ref=hyperallergic.com), third floor, Susan and John Hess Family Gallery and Theater (99 Gansevoort Street, Manhattan)

*More info* [*here*](http://whitney.org/Events/SibylKempson2017WinterEquinox?ref=hyperallergic.com)*.*