In January 2026, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) will open a full retrospective dedicated to the artist and writer Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. This will be the first major exhibition of her work in over twenty years.
The show, Multiple Offerings, will run from January to April. After it closes in Berkeley, the exhibition will travel to other locations across the country and internationally, with tour venues expected to be announced later in 2025.
Key Takeaways
- The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) will host the most comprehensive retrospective on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha from January to April 2026, titled “Multiple Offerings.”
- The show will include over 100 pieces of artwork and archival material, with many never-before-seen works.
- This is Cha’s first major retrospective in over 20 years, and it will go on a national and international tour after its debut in Berkeley.
Exhibition to Feature Over 100 Works from BAMPFA’s Archive
This exhibition is the most complete presentation of Cha’s work to date. It will include more than 100 pieces from BAMPFA’s archives and collection. The show will feature performance documentation, video, film, writing, artist’s books, ceramics, fiber art, and photography. Many of these works have never been shown in a museum before.
BAMPFA has been the primary caretaker of Cha’s work and legacy since 1992. That year, the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Memorial Foundation donated a large part of her archive to the museum. Since then, over 75% of the research requests BAMPFA receives have been about Cha’s work and materials.
According to senior curator Victoria Sung, who is organizing the show with curatorial associate Tausif Noor, BAMPFA is the only place where a retrospective like this is possible. Sung proposed the idea for the retrospective when she applied for her position at the museum in 2023.
The Exhibition Highlights Cha’s Full Body of Work Across Media
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha worked in many forms. She created performance art, films, videos, installations, photographs, fiber art, and ceramic pieces. She also wrote, edited, and published. Her best-known work is Dictee, a book that combines poetry, history, and memoir. It was published in 1982, just two months before Cha’s murder at the age of 31.
This new retrospective will include early pieces that show her interest in ceramics and textiles, which are often overlooked. It will also show her more recognized conceptual pieces that combine images and text. The goal of the exhibition is to represent her entire artistic practice, not just the parts that are already known.
According to Sung, Cha’s art cannot be placed into one category. She explained that it remained difficult to define Cha’s approach even when going through the archive piece by piece. Cha’s work is interdisciplinary and often avoids traditional forms.
Some of the specific works that will be included are Faire-Part (1976), which features text on an envelope mounted on paper; Permutations (1976), a video still of a woman facing the camera; Aveugle Voix (1975), a performance piece staged in San Francisco where Cha used cloth printed with words to cover her eyes and mouth; and White Dust From Mongolia (1980), a video work showing people walking through snow in Korea. Each piece connects to themes Cha explored throughout her career, such as language, memory, identity, and displacement.
Cha’s Life and Career Are Central to the Exhibition’s Context
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was born in Busan, South Korea, in 1951. She emigrated to the United States with her family in 1962, first arriving in Hawaii and then moving to San Francisco in 1964. She studied at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1969 to 1978. There, she earned two undergraduate degrees in art and comparative literature, as well as two graduate degrees—an MA and an MFA in art.
During her time at UC Berkeley, she worked at the museum that would later house her legacy, which was then known as the University Art Museum, now BAMPFA.
In 1980, Cha moved to New York City. She began working as an editor and writer at Tanam Press. There, she published Dictee and also edited a collection of writings on film titled Apparatus. Before she could continue developing her career, she was raped and murdered in November 1982. She was 31.
Dictee became more influential after her death. It is now widely studied and has had a major impact on Asian American literature and feminist writing. Cathy Park Hong, in her 2021 book Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, wrote about Cha’s use of language as something broken, textured, and distant.
Hong said that Cha treated language as both the thing that hurts and the tool that creates meaning. In a message to ARTnews, Hong stated that Cha had been overlooked in the art and writing worlds for many years. She added that BAMPFA’s exhibition is especially meaningful because Berkeley was Cha’s intellectual home.
The Exhibition Connects Cha to Artists Then and Now
In addition to Cha’s own work, the exhibition will show pieces by artists who were her peers and those who she influenced. These include Bay Area conceptual artists Jim Melchert and Terry Fox, as well as choreographers Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer, who were active in the 1970s and 1980s. Their works help place Cha’s practice in the wider experimental art scenes of her time.
The exhibition will also feature recent works by contemporary artists who have responded to Cha’s legacy. Renée Green, who explored Cha’s influence in the 1990s, will be included, as well as Na Mira and Cici Wu, who have created film-based installations connected to Cha’s memory. These artists will appear in a special section of the exhibition that focuses on Cha’s influence on later generations.
The show is also accompanied by a new museum catalog, which will be the first book of its kind on Cha in over 20 years. The volume will include detailed documentation of her artwork and archive. Victoria Sung edits it and features essays by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jordan Carter, Danielle A. Jackson, Mia Kang, and Mason Leaver-Yap.
It will also contain a roundtable discussion between Na Mira and Cici Wu, moderated by Min Sun Jeon. The catalog aims to serve as both a record of the exhibition and an open-ended resource, reflecting how Cha’s own archive encourages exploration.
Recent interest in Cha’s work has increased. Her art was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2022 and the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale at the Seoul Museum of Art in 2023. In 2022, the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College presented Audience Distant Relative, another exhibition focused on her work. This new retrospective at BAMPFA builds on that momentum and presents the most complete overview of her work to date.
Executive director Julie Rodrigues Widholm explained that this exhibition fits the museum’s mission to present shows that no one else could do in the same way. She said that Cha’s examination of language, identity, and place continues to connect with artists and audiences across generations.
Exhibition Details and Background on BAMPFA
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings opens on January 17, 2026, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Victoria Sung and Tausif Noor curated the exhibition, which is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Korea Foundation, and the Shah Garg Women Artists Research Fund. After its run in Berkeley, the show will tour nationally and internationally.
BAMPFA, part of the University of California, Berkeley, has been active since 1970. It holds over 25,000 artworks and 18,000 films and videos. The museum is especially strong in modern and contemporary art, historical Chinese painting, and African American quilts.
It is located near downtown Berkeley in a building redesigned by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The museum combines international programming with a focus on its local community and continues to support both historical and experimental art.
