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13/5/2004

The Dream of the Audience

Generali Foundation, Wien

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

In a comprehensive retrospective, the Generali Foundation is presenting the work of the Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982) for the first time in Europe. The Generali Foundation has reconstructed several of Cha's works including a seminal slide projection, which will be shown for the first time since the artist's early death.

Born in Korea, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha emigrated to the U.S. with her family at the age of 13. She grew up in San Francisco, studied comparative literature and art at the University of California, Berkeley from the late 1960s to late 1970s. Deeply affected by her own geographical exile as well as cultural and linguistic displacement, the artist addressed themes such as memory and alienation. Characteristic of her exceptionally poetic and conceptual works is an intense engagement with language. She used the learning of foreign languages to go beyond their basic function as means of communication, analyzing them and experimenting with "other relationships with language." A basic topic in Cha's work is the artistic realization of structuralist linguistic theories and French film theory, which she has studied in Paris. The artist is known among film scholars for her publication "Apparatus. Cinematographic Apparatus: Selected Writings", which she edited in 1980-a standard work with seminal essays on film theory. In the middle section the book includes the work "Commentaire", the artist's own contribution to the subject.

In various media such as artist's books, mail art, performances, slide shows, film, video, and installations, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha explored issues closely connected with her personal experience. Her complex works contain cultural references of Asian, European, and American origin. This artistic practice culminates in "Dictee" (1982), a work in the form of a book, which Cha edited during her lifetime, but that was published shortly after her death. Her videos, films, and slide projections are based on similar concepts, as are her performances, into which she introduced a real, three-dimensional element as an alternative to the projected image. The performances by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha have been described as outstanding experiences made unique by the artist's own movements and voice and the entire choreography and environment, which included the use of multi-media elements. In just one decade Cha created a pioneering body of works whose relevance has only recently been discovered. What appears significant is the topicality informing this work. Migration and the cultural alienation that accompanies it have increasingly become the fate of countless people throughout the world and have thus become the subject of art works.

The Dream of the Audience: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982) has been organized by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the heirs to the artist's estate. The Generali Foundation has expanded the exhibition and is organizing a tour in Europe.

Publication available (Ger./Eng.) co-published by Walther Konig, Cologne. Foreword by Dietrich Karner, introduction by Sabine Breitwieser, and essays by Constance M. Lewallen, Lawrence R. Rinder, Trinh T. Minh-ha, afterword by Bernadette Hak Eun Silveus, 292 pages, 150 color and 380 b&w illustrations.

Softcover, Generali Foundation, ISBN 3-901107-44-4
Hardcover, Walther Konig, Cologne, ISBN 3-88375-819-1

Image: Aveugle Voix, 1975, Performance, Foto Trip Callaghan, Courtesy University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Curator Exhibition Berkeley: Constance Lewallen
Curator Exhibition Vienna: Sabine Breitwieser
Press Office: Susanne Buder

Generali Foundation
Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15
1040 Vienna, Austria
Phone +43 1 504 98 80
Fax +43 1 504 98 83

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