Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (b. 1951, Busan, South Korea; d. 1982, New York City) emigrated to the United States in 1962, settling first in Hawaii and then moving to San Francisco in 1964. The Bay Area remained Cha's home for most of her life. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she received four undergraduate and graduate degrees in comparative literature and art. In 1980, Cha moved to New York City, where she worked as an editor and writer for Tanam Press, producing two important works: Dictée, a book-form collage of poetry, found text, and images; and Apparatus, an anthology of writings on the film apparatus. In 1982, Cha was awarded an artist's residence at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and was preparing for an upcoming exhibition at Artists Space, New York City. Cha’s work has been included in recent exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale: This Too, Is a Map (2023), Seoul Museum of Art; Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It's Kept, Whitney Museum, New York City; and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Audience Distant Relative, Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2022). In 1990, BAMPFA organized the artist’s first solo exhibition as part of its MATRIX series of contemporary art, followed by her first retrospective in 2001 (Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Dream of the Audience). The exhibition traveled to seven venues, including University of California, Irvine; Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Krannert Art Museum at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Henry Art Gallery at University of Washington, Seattle; Ssamzie Space, Seoul; Generali Foundation, Vienna; and Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona. In 1992, Cha’s family donated the entirety of her artworks and archives to BAMPFA, where they form the cornerstone of the museum’s Conceptual Art Study Center and continue to be accessible to researchers today.