English
ARTnews has named Theresa Hak Kyung Cha its 2026 Artist of the Year, honoring the late Korean American artist with a major retrospective that offered fresh perspective on her wide-ranging creative practice. The recognition coincides with the exhibition “Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings,” which opened at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive on January 24, 2026, and later traveled to Artists Space in New York, where it ran from September 11 to November 21, 2026.
A Practice Beyond Dictée
Cha died in 1982 at a young age, yet her influence has only grown in the decades since. She is best known for Dictée, a genre-defying book that blends fiction, memoir and hagiography. However, the BAMPFA retrospective expanded well beyond that single work. It brought together early ceramics, performance documentation, text-based works, mail art and video art. The result was a comprehensive and elegantly installed survey of her full creative output.
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Curators Victoria Sung and Tausif Noor shaped the exhibition around a conceptual framework Cha herself developed. The title “Multiple Offerings” draws from her phrase “Multiple Telling with Multiple Offerings.” This approach guided her art-making and produced works designed to be experienced in more than one way. Rather than providing easy answers, her practice opens a conversation and invites viewers to construct their own meaning.
Diaspora as Creative Foundation
Cha’s childhood move from Korea to the United States deeply shaped her artistic vision. Living between two cultures gave her fertile ground to explore what it means to exist in diaspora. In that in-between space, where language often falls short, she found her artistic voice.
Sung traced the key stages of Cha’s short but productive career. These included her student years at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as periods she spent in New York, France and South Korea. At the time of her death, Cha was working on a major film titled White Dust From Mongolia. She had produced storyboards and shot footage, but never completed the project. The exhibition acknowledged this unfinished work and included pieces by artists Na Mira and Cici Wu, who each created new work in direct response to it.
Other Nominees Recognized
The 2026 ARTnews Artist of the Year award also recognized four other nominees. Wifredo Lam received a nomination for his exhibition “When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Tom Lloyd earned recognition for his show at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which also traveled to the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. Ceija Stojka was nominated for “Making Visible” at The Drawing Center in New York. Finally, Betty Parsons received a nomination for “An Expanded World” at CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
Together, the nominations reflect a broader effort to reassess artists whose contributions have historically received less attention than they deserve.
