Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Bronx Museum of the Arts
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha died in 1982 at age thirty-one, but “The Dream of the Audience,” curated by Constance M. Lewallen and originating at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (where Cha’s own is housed), was the first major retrospective of her work. Cha’s reputation has battened in the interim on her posthumously published experimental novel Dictée (1982), a fringe classic for students of women’s studies, book arts, and poetry. For loyalists, access to the exhibition’s works on paper, performances, sound pieces, and films came as a blessing long overdue.
The show didn’t look that