A Pale Persephone: On the Works of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

ABSTRACT

This essay interlaces personal narrative with an analysis of the video and textual works of the Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. I begin with a sequence of visits to the Puck Building, the site of Cha’s murder in 1980, in an ill-fated attempt to recover her presence in luxury penthouse suites now owned by the Kushner family. I move toward the screen as a site of permanence where I can unearth Cha’s ruminations on history, mythology, language, and cinema.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian American poetry
• Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
• historical memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Dan Saltzein, “Overlooked No More: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Artist and Author Who Explored Identity,” New York Times, January 7, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/obituaries/theresa-hak-kyung-cha-overlooked.html.

2. Ibid.

3. David W. Dunlap, “Landmarks Panel Rejects Second Penthouse Plan for Puck Building,” New York Times, November 15, 2011, https://archive.nytimes.com/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/landmarks-panel-rejects-second-penthouse-plan-for-puck-building/.

4. Vivian Marino, “$28.5 Million, a Record Sale in Nolita,” New York Times, February 26, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/realestate/28–5-million-arecord-sale-in-nolita.html.

5. Jennifer Tzeses, “In New York’s Famed Puck Building, a Two-Story Penthouse Is Listed for $58.5 Million,” Architectural Digest, March 11, 2016, https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/new-york-puck-building-two-story-penthouse.

6. Saltzein, “Overlooked No More.”

7. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee (1982, repr. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 1.

8. Ibid., 3.

9. Wendy Xu, The Past (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2021), 87.

10. Mouth to Mouth. Directed by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archive, 1975.

11. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Artist’s Statement/Summary of Work (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 1978), https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf4j49n6h6/?brand=oac4.

12. Shelley Sunn Wong, Elaine H. Kim, and Lisa Lowe, Writing Self, Writing Nation: A Collection of Essays on Dictée by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (Bloomington, IN: Third Woman Press, 1994).

13. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Exilée and Temps Morts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022), 96.

14. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).

15. White Dust from Mongolia. Directed by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 1980.

16. Cha, Exilee and Temps Morts, 55.

17. Cha, Dictee, 81.

18. Ibid., 32.

19. Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1999), 147.

20. Ibid.

21. Cha, Dictee, 33.

22. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, “Recit: Previously Unpublished Works by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha,” FENCE (Fall/Winter 2001), https://fenceportal.org/recit-previously-unpublished-works-by-theresa-hak-kyung-cha/.

23. Cha, Dictee, 131.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., 141.

26. Ibid., 118.

27. Ibid., 160.

28. Ibid., 175.

29. Ibid., 177.

30. Ibid., 155.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angie Sijun Lou

Angie Sijun Lou is a Ph.D. Candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She researches the shadow of Cold War militarism in Pax Americana and its reverberations in contemporary Asian American poetics.