life Tommy Kha Half, Full, Quarter Semi-autobiographical self-portraitist Tommy Kha’s book Half, Full, Quarter tells his story of art and truth by Tricia Dewey I think Ocean Vuong says it best, which is ‘start with truth and end with art.’ 20 Creativity | <strong>Jan</strong>+<strong>Feb</strong> <strong>2024</strong> | focuslgbt.com
I think what Memphis does affects the country, that coming together, not just in support, but that interaction, and just the togetherness, that community inaction. I hope that other people feel that and receive that. Photographer Tommy Kha has been described as a semi-autobiographical selfportraitist. What is that, you might ask? His book, Tommy Kha: Half, Full, Quarter, published in <strong>Feb</strong>ruary 2023, answers that question. It contains many of these selfportraits, at times with his mother, and in different, surprising compositions, or in the form of cardboard cutouts of different sizes and contours. Half, Full, Quarter was a joint venture with nonprofit publisher the Aperture Foundation and other groups, as well as part of Kha’s 2021 Next Step Award, which supports U.S.- based artists with attention to equity and presenting diverse opinions “at critical junctures in their artistic development.” An exhibition, Ghost Bites, affiliated with the award opened in <strong>Feb</strong>ruary 2023 at the Camera Club of New York on Baxter Street. Kha lives in New York and Memphis, teaches at the Parsons School of Design, and has an exhibition coming up in March <strong>2024</strong> at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Kha describes his new book as five intertwined bodies of work. It’s a survey of ideas he’s been working on the last few years that include photographs taken by his mother, May Kha, in the 1980s. The end of Half, Full, Quarter contains collages that were added toward the final part of Kha’s process. He played with them to try to reiterate the cutout gestures that appear in the book’s main body of work called “Facades.” That section is basically pictures of his cutout form, cardboard standings, and the insert of the 3D printed mask of his face. Another section of the book, “<strong>South</strong>ern Portraits,” is composed almost entirely of photographs set in Memphis, as are the photographs in the section titled “Semi-self-portraits.” These many themes at work in Tommy Kha’s photography rhyme with his observations about creativity. He says, “To be creative, to create, are almost synonymous to being an archivist, activist, historian, artist, archaeologist, hunter, gatherer, an exorcist, a medium. But I think Ocean Vuong says it best, which is ‘start with truth and end with art.’” That art and truth for Kha start with his Memphis background. Kha grew up in Whitehaven. He went to Graceland Elementary, and graduated from Memphis College of Art in 2011, before getting his MFA from Yale in 2013. “Memphis is not just this kind of subject matter for me,” says Kha, “It appears in my work. It's in the background of some of my photographs. It’s where I experienced the majority of my life. It played a really big role. So there's a bit of anxiety and attempts at understanding that happens when I come home. My family still lives in Memphis. I feel like I'm more of a part-time person or Memphis expat being out in the world, but I always try to find things that remind me of home. I'm looking for something familiar, something that kind of echoes that feeling.” Kha was working on Half, Full, Quarter in 2020 when he was invited to submit a work to the UrbanArt Commission for the Terminal B reopening art gallery display at Memphis International Airport to be featured with other artists who grew up or worked in Memphis. Kha was originally excited about this as a native Memphian, as well as the opportunity to be shown alongside his teachers and mentors. His initial proposal, though, was rejected. Closer to summer 2021, UrbanArt and the airport requested his art to be shown in <strong>Jan</strong>uary 2022. The photograph, titled “Constellations VIII,” depicts a cardboard cutout of Kha in a 1970’s Elvis jumpsuit amidst what appears to be a 1960’s era kitchen. Kha made the photograph in 2017 and it had been on a billboard in LA and on the cover of Vice magazine. Kha’s photograph was on display in Terminal B for about a month before he began to get messages from UrbanArt and airport officials about negative comments about the work on Facebook, some of which included racist complaints. Kha says there were some unhappy Elvis fans who had a lot to say about his photograph. Kha met with airport officials alongside the UrbanArt Commission over Zoom and there was an agreement to discuss the situation further. He requested to be informed if there were talks about taking the work down. Unfortunately, those further talks did not happen, and that weekend the photograph was removed. “It feels really crappy to have your work taken down,” said Kha, “The piece, the first print, was destroyed. It was on vinyl. There was a reason why I asked to be told if it was going to be removed. There was a way to save it in some way.” Soon, supporters of the piece began to speak out and a campaign in favor of returning Kha’s art grew across social media. Kha says, “I guess people were expecting me to say something publicly. So I ended up posting on Instagram about my work being taken down.” The UrbanArts Commission also posted on Instagram in favor of reinstalling the <strong>Jan</strong>+<strong>Feb</strong> <strong>2024</strong> | focuslgbt.com | Creativity 21
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