Artist Talk:
Tommy Kha
Thursday, October 8th at Candela Photographic Arts
Doors open at 6 pm. Talk begins at 6:30 pm
Free and open to the public
Join us for a conversation with Brooklyn-based artist and 2025 Guggenheim Fellow Tommy Kha. Facades is a continuation of Kha’s practice of collaborative, multi-generational work wherein the artist is both photographer and performer:
I see my body as a limited space extending its narratives outside of it through familial relationships and identity politics. Thus, my work is a mapping of Asian Diaspora, which may be a possible space my queerness figures into against landscapes that are a result of trauma and violence from my mother’s generation.
Specifically, quarter- and half- self-portraits, or photographs of my grandparents and mother respectively are images of post-immigration experiences and the darker histories not pictured family album—the family album and my body are sites of conflicting narratives.
Kha’s photographs take the form of living collages, forgoing digital manipulation in favor of physical layering in-camera in the form of cut outs, mark making, masks, and wallpapers.
The exhibition will be on view through October 24 alongside JW Toftness' When Seeds Are Sent for Flowers.
Tommy Kha (b. Memphis, TN) is a photographer currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Kha holds an MFA in Photography from Yale University, where he currently teaches.
He is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow.
He is previously a recipient of the Hayes Prize, Next Step Award, and Foam Talent, and NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow. He has had solo shows at Higher Pictures, Baxter St. at the Camera Club of New York, and Blue Sky Gallery. Kha’s work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Aperture, the New Yorker, among other publications.
Currently, Kha studies kung fu under Sifu Ken Lo. He joined Higher Pictures in 2022. His first major publication, Half, Full, Quarter was published by Aperture in February 2023.