Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (차학경, 4 March 1951, Busan, South Korea – 5 November 1982, New York City, US) was a Korean-American conceptual artist, writer and filmmaker.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s innovative oeuvre blurred distinctions between conceptual art, literature and film. A performance and multimedia artist, Cha addressed themes of displacement, language and intercultural identity through an interdisciplinary body of work, tracing feminist genealogies and straddling an array of media, yet always returning to the written word to expose language’s identity-shaping power alongside its intrinsic limitations. Cha was a polyglot: she grew up speaking Korean and immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of 12, where she acquired English and began learning French, which she would continue to study at the University of California, Berkeley (1969–1979) and abroad in Paris (1976). Cha’s family was forced to uproot repeatedly, fleeing the Japanese occupation of Korea and the Korean War. Cha’s mother grew up in Manchuria, and the family later moved back to Korea and finally to the United States, settling in San Francisco.

Cha earned four degrees in comparative literature and art while at Berkeley, and became a practicing artist during this time, staging performances such as Barren Cave Mute (1974), in which the three words of the title were written on long pieces of wax paper, slowly revealed as the flame of a candle melted the wax. In an eight-minute black-and-white video work titled Mouth to Mouth (1975), a mouth forms an ‘O’ shape and then closes as English and Korean words appear on the screen, alluding to the beginnings of language acquisition and identity formation.

During Cha’s parents’ childhood under Japanese rule, it was forbidden to speak the Korean language, an example of linguistic erasure that she would reflect on in her magnum opus Dictée, published in 1982. Sometimes referred to as an artist’s book, other times as an experimental novel or poetry collection, Dictée defies categorisation, just as Cha herself slipped between identities. Radically embracing complexity, Dictée is a lifelong reflection on displacement, migration and language. Written in English and French with Korean and Chinese characters present in accompanying images, it explores these themes through a collage-like combination of historical photographs and text. With nine sections named for each of the Greek muses, Dictée invokes women warrior figures such as Joan of Arc; the early 20th century Korean revolutionary, Yu Gwan-sun; Cha’s mother; and herself.

Cha relocated to New York City in 1980 and married photographer Richard Barnes (b. 1953) in 1982. When she went to meet Barnes at Manhattan’s Puck Building on 5 November 1982, she was raped and murdered by a security guard. Her life cut short by this violent death, it is only posthumously that Cha received recognition for the prolific, poetic work she produced during her tragically abbreviated career. Her formally innovative practice paved the way for the next generation of Asian-American women artists to dare to make nuanced, intellectually demanding and unabashedly conceptual work, and to allow their identities to enrich their practices. (2023)

Works

Films

• Secret Spill, Electronic Arts Intermix, 1974, 27 min.
• Mouth to Mouth, Electronic Arts Intermix, 1975, 8 min.
• Permutations, Electronic Arts Intermix, 1976, 10 min.
• Vidéoème, Electronic Arts Intermix, 1976, 3 min.
• Re Dis Appearing, Electronic Arts Intermix, 1977, 3 min.
• Recalling Telling ReTelling, 1978.
• Passages Paysages, 1979.
• White Dust From Mongolia, Electronic Arts Intermix, 1980, 30 min. (uncompleted)
• Exilée and Temps Mort, 1981.

Performances

• Barren Cave Mute, 1974, at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Aveugle Voix, 1975, at 63 Bluxome Street, San Francisco.
• A Ble Wail, 1975, at Worth Ryder Gallery, University of California, Berkeley.
• Life Mixing, 1975, at University Art Museum, Berkeley.
• From Vampyr, 1976, at Centre des etudes americains du cinema, Paris.
• Reveille dans la Brume, 1977, at La Mamelle Arts Center and Fort Mason Arts Center, San Francisco.
• Monologue, 1977, at KPFA Radio Station, Berkeley.
• Other Things Seen. Other Things Heard, 1978, at Western Front Gallery, Vancouver, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
• Pause Still, 1979, at 80 Langton Street, San Francisco.
• Exilée, 1980, at San Francisco Art Institute, SFMOMA, and 1981, at The Queens Museum.

Publications

• Audience / Distant Relative, The Little Word Machine Publication, 1977. [1]

• "Reveille dans la Brume", 1977.

• "Étang", Berkeley: Line, 1978.

• editor, Apparatus: Cinematographic Apparatus: Selected Writings, New York: Tanam Press, 1980, 437 pp. Anthology of texts on cinema.

• "Exilee", "Temps Morts", in HOTEL, ed. Reese Williams, New York: Tanam Press, 1980.

• "Pravda/ISTINA", Heresies 14, New York: Heresies, 1982, p 24.

• Dictee, New York: Tanam Press, 1982, 179 pp; repr., Third Woman Press, 1995; repr., Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001, PDF; repr., restored ed., 2022, 179 pp. Reviews: Myung Mi Kim (However), Kirsten Twelbeck, Michael Stone-Richards (Glossator), Caterina Stamou (JAM IT!). WP.
  • Dikute: Kankokukei Amerikajin josei ātisuto ni yoru jidenteki ekurichūru [ディクテ: 韓国系アメリカ人女性アーティストによる自伝的エクリチュール], trans. Yasuko Ikeuchi, Tokyo: Seidosha (青土社), 2003, 211 pp. (Japanese)
  • Tikt'e [딕테], trans. Kyong-nyon Kim, Tomato, 1997; repr., 문학사상, 2024. (Korean)/(French)

• Clio History, New York: Wedge Press, 1982, [22] pp. Excerpted from Dictee.

• Polymnia: Sacred Poetry, New York: Tanam Press, 1986. Final chapter from Dictee.

• The Dream of the Audience: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982), ed. Constance M. Lewallen, Berkeley, CA: University of California Berkeley Art Museum, 2001, xi+172 pp. Exh. cat. With essays by Lawrence R. Rinder and Trinh T. Minh-ha. Introduction. [2]
  • Der Traum des Publikums / The Dream of the Audience. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, ed. Sabine Breitwieser, Vienna: Generali Foundation, and Cologne: Walther Koenig, 2004, 290 pp. [3] (German)/(English)
  • Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: el sueño del público, Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tápies, 2005, 87 pp. (Spanish)

• Exilée and Temps Morts: Selected Works, ed. & intro. Constance Lewallen, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009; repr., 2022, vii+277 pp. Excerpt. Publisher.

On Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

• Writing Self, Writing Nation: A Collection of Essays on "Dictee" by Theresa H.K. Cha, Berkeley, CA: Third Woman Press, 1994, ix+161 pp.

• She Follows No Progression: A Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Reader, Brooklyn, NY: Wendy's Subway, 2024, 293 pp. Contributors: Sam Cha, Marian Chudnovsky, Jesse Chun, Una Chung, Anton Haugen, Irene Hsu, Valentina Jager, Juwon Jun, Youbin Kang, Eunsong Kim, Youna Kwak, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Andrew Yong Hoon Lee, Jennifer Gayoung Lee, Sujin Lee, Florence Li, Serubiri Moses, Jed Munson, Yves Tong Nguyen, Wirunwan Victoria Pitaktong, Brandon Shimoda, Caterina Stamou, Megan Sungyoon, Teline Trần, and Soyoung Yoon. Event series. Book launch (video).

Links

• AWARE
• Wikipedia