From January 24 to April 19, 2026, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) will present《Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings》, a retrospective of the Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982).
 
This exhibition marks the first major museum retrospective of Cha’s work in twenty-five years, offering a renewed art-historical examination of her brief yet densely articulated body of work.

The exhibition surveys Cha’s expansive multimedia practice, encompassing text-based works, video, performance, installation, and publications. Featuring approximately one hundred works and archival materials, it situates Cha’s practice within the context of experimental art in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s, revealing the complexity and scope of her artistic position during this period.
 
BAMPFA has been one of the principal institutions preserving Cha’s legacy since receiving a significant donation of her works and archives from the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Memorial Foundation in 1992. This exhibition represents the most comprehensive public presentation to date of those holdings.

Nonlinear Narratives and the Methodology of “Multiple Offerings”
 
Born in Korea and later immigrating to the United States, Cha studied art, comparative literature, and film at the University of California, Berkeley, developing a practice that traversed visual art, language, and movement. Central to her work was not the transmission of a fixed message, but the exposure of the very conditions through which meaning is produced. Cha articulated this approach through the concept she termed “Multiple Telling with Multiple Offering.”

This retrospective adopts Cha’s methodology as a guiding curatorial principle. Rather than following a linear chronology, the exhibition is organized around recurring thematic constellations—memory, exile and migration, the instability of language, history and myth, and the female voice. Viewers are thus invited to encounter Cha’s work through multiple points of entry, engaging with it not as a singular narrative but as an open field of interpretive possibilities.

Tensions Between Language, Body, and History

Cha’s most widely recognized work, Dictée (1982), occupies a central position in the exhibition. Both a literary work and a visual-conceptual project, Dictée appropriates the format of French dictation exercises to interweave linguistic discipline, colonial history, and female narratives. Since its publication, the book has been continuously referenced across contemporary literature, art history, postcolonial studies, and feminist theory, and is now widely regarded as a modern classic.
 
Alongside Dictée, the exhibition presents a range of lesser-known works, including performance Aveugle Voix, film- and text-based installations, and early works in fiber and ceramics. Together, these materials underscore the fact that Cha’s practice cannot be confined to a single genre or medium. Instead, they reveal a sustained investigation into the tensions between language and the body, documentation and enactment.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha in the History of American Experimental Art
 
Cha’s work is closely connected to the developments of conceptual art, experimental film, and performance art that unfolded in San Francisco and New York during the 1970s. Yet rather than simply adopting the dominant languages of Western conceptualism, Cha forged a distinct critical position by interweaving experiences of migration and diaspora, multilingual environments, and memories of modern Korean history.
 
The exhibition situates Cha’s work within a broader network of contemporaries, presenting it not as an isolated personal narrative but as part of an interconnected artistic field. Works by artists who were active during the same period, as well as by those influenced by Cha’s practice, are displayed alongside her own, making visible the intellectual and artistic traces she left on subsequent generations.
 
Although Cha did not receive sustained institutional recognition during her lifetime, her work has gradually gained significance across literature, visual art, and cultural theory in the decades following her death. This retrospective seeks to position Cha not as a marginal or tragic figure, but as a practitioner who fundamentally reconfigured the forms and languages of contemporary art.
 
During the exhibition period, a series of related programs—including public readings of Dictée, academic symposia, and film screenings—will take place. In addition, the exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of Cha’s first major museum monograph in more than twenty years, providing a critical opportunity to reassess her work within today’s contemporary art discourse.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982)
 
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982) was a Korean American artist and writer born in Busan, Korea, who worked primarily in the United States. She immigrated with her family to Hawaii in 1961 and later moved to San Francisco and New York, growing up under the conditions of diaspora. Her parents had themselves experienced displacement and migration during the Japanese colonial period, a family history that deeply informed Cha’s artistic practice.
 
Cha moved to the United States at the age of eleven and studied art and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, later pursuing film theory studies in France. Working across literature, experimental film, photography, and performance, she explored questions of language, memory, history, and identity.
 
Her seminal work Dictée interweaves figures such as Yu Gwan-sun and Joan of Arc with her own family history, articulating colonial history and female subjectivity through an avant-garde narrative structure. The book continues to be regarded as a foundational theoretical and literary text.
 
In 1982, shortly after the publication of Dictée, Cha died in New York as a result of a violent incident. Concern that the brutality of the event might eclipse her artistic achievements led to a prolonged reluctance to publicly address the circumstances of her death, contributing to a delayed critical recognition of her work.
 
Despite her short life, Cha’s practice has been steadily reexamined and reassessed. Today, her work is understood not as a reflection of personal tragedy but as a radical artistic practice that critically engages with memory, migration, and the instability of language, expanding the possibilities of narrative and form in contemporary art.



Exhibition Information
 
Exhibition Title:《Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings》
Artist: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982)
Exhibition Dates: January 24 – April 19, 2026
Venue: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)
Exhibition Type: Retrospective
Exhibition Contents: Approximately 100 works and archival materials, including text-based works, video, performance, installations, and publications
Related Programs: Public readings of Dictée, academic symposia, and film screenings
Exhibition Catalogue: The first museum monograph on the artist to be published in more than twenty years
Organized by: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Supported by: Korea Foundation (KF)
Website: https://bampfa.org/program/theresa-hak-kyung-cha-multiple-offerings