“Photography is a language,” explains Tommy Kha. Other Things Uttered, his first museum solo exhibition, introduces viewers to the distinctive vocabulary and grammar of his photographic practice. The exhibition’s title serves as an homage to Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard, a 1978 performance by Korean American artist and writer Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, alluding to the themes of translation and mistranslation that both artists see as central to navigating multiple and fragmented identities.
Born in Memphis’s Whitehaven neighborhood, Kha grew up as a queer child in an immigrant family whose multigenerational journey from China through Vietnam ultimately led to the American South. His work emerges from this complex intersection of identities and histories, expanding conventional notions of self-portraiture through his unique visual language. Kha’s photographs often feature masks of his face and cutouts of his torso, eyes, or hands used as stand-ins for his own body. The resulting images possess a playful strangeness, evoking an uncanny sense of displacement and dislocation—a feeling of not quite belonging. At the same time, these surrogates function as literal insertions into the pictorial frame, asserting the artist’s presence and challenging who is represented in the history of photography and American art more broadly.
Kha is the second recipient of the biannual Bartlett H. Hayes Jr. Prize, awarded by the Addison Artist Council (AAC). The AAC builds on the Addison’s nearly century-long commitment to supporting living artists. The museum’s storied history includes many “firsts” with exhibitions, acquisitions, or residencies by such highly regarded artists as Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, Dawoud Bey, Sheila Hicks, Hans Hofmann, Andy Warhol, and Francesca Woodman. The Hayes Prize continues this extraordinary tradition by providing an artist with a first solo museum exhibition, along with a publication, an acquisition of art for the collection, and a residency on campus.
This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of William Luke White and Johnny Kha and is sponsored by the Addison Artist Council (AAC), AAC Founder-level member Jason S. Tyler (PA 2001), and the Edward E. Elson Artist-in-Residence Fund.
Related Events
related exhibition materials
videos
Assistant Curator Rachel Vogel explores the work of contemporary photographer Tommy Kha, the second recipient of the Addison’s Bartlett H. Hayes Jr. Prize, in this Zoom webinar.
Other Things Uttered, Kha’s first museum solo exhibition, introduces viewers to the distinctive vocabulary and grammar of his photographic practice.
This program was presented in partnership with Andover’s Memorial Hall Library (recorded on September 30, 2025).
In this presentation organized by The Brooklyn Rail, Edward E. Elson Artist-in-Residence Tommy Kha joins artist S. Billie Mandle for a conversation on Zoom. The discussion focuses on Kha’s photographic practice as well as his exhibition Hayes Prize 2025: Tommy Kha, Other Things Uttered, on view at the Addison through January 25, 2026 (recorded on October 27, 2025).
Installation views
Virtual Tour
By Lightshed Photography Studio
