2024 Issue 1 Jan/Feb Focus - Mid-South Magazine

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 February 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 February 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 2024 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, “Southern 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 January 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
Jan+Feb 2024 | focuslgbt.com | Creativity 21