"In this first major monograph, Tommy Kha explores the personal psycho-geography of his hometown. As the artist states, 'Memphis has become, for me, not only the place where I was raised but an active borderland between fantasy and memory, nostalgia and history, nonfiction and mythology.' Tommy Kha: Half, Full, Quarter weaves together self-portraits and classically bucolic landscapes punctuated by the traces of East Asian stories embedded in the topography of the American South. Memphis is where his mother, fleeing Vietnam in the early 1980s, settled, along with his extended family. Throughout the work, his mother emerges as a recurring character, sometimes the subject of quiet photographic study, and in others, a collaborative muse. 'I'm a cut of my mom,' Kha asserts, 'Every photograph I make of her is a Half Self-Portrait.' In assembling a visual record of the struggle to find his own voice and to create a fragmented portrait of his family, Kha challenges the cultural amnesia around Asian lives and experiences in recent American histories." -- Provided by publisher
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.