Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's first retrospective in twenty-five years, spanning text, video, and performance work including her landmark book Dictée, alongside an unfinished photographic series.

Why go

This is the first major retrospective of Cha's work in 25 years, organized by BAMPFA and presented at the very venue where she was preparing an exhibition when she was murdered in 1982. The show includes nearly 100 artworks and archival materials, plus an unfinished photographic series Cha was creating at the time of her death.

What to expect

A retrospective spanning Cha's interdisciplinary practice across text-based media, video, performance, and photography, organized around her concept of "Multiple Telling with Multiple Offering" to explore themes of memory, displacement, and language. The exhibition includes black-and-white prints, film stills, performance documentation, and archiva

Things to know

• Cha emigrated from South Korea to the U.S. in 1962 and studied at UC Berkeley in comparative literature, art, and film.
• She was murdered on November 5, 1982, just weeks before her planned Artists Space exhibition.
• Her landmark book Dictée (1982) is a genre-defying collage of poetry, found text, and images.
• Cha's complete archives have been housed at BAMPFA since 1992, donated by the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Memorial Foundation.
• The retrospective is curated by Victoria Sung, Phyllis C. Wattis Senior Curator at BAMPFA, with Tausif Noor.
• Lead support provided by Teiger Foundation.