Tommy Kha's Bits & Pieces | Art21 "New York Close Up"

(gentle music)

- I grew up in Memphis

and I lived in a neighborhood
called White Haven

for most of my childhood.

I wasn't really allowed
to leave the house,

so all I knew of Memphis was
just, for the longest time,

just my front yard and the backyard.

One Halloween, we started
to play this superhero game,

I think it was Batman.

Because we were just poor,

we were all wearing the same thing,

these black garbage bags,

and mostly having to rely
on ourselves and our minds

and our imagination that if we say it,

that was enough for us.

There was this kind

of weird permission my family gave me.

It was, "It's okay to assimilate that,

if you need to learn
English, that's great.

You don't have to hold onto the past

and maintaining speaking Chinese with us."

It was them letting me go.

The every day of, "Where are you from?

Where are you really from?

What's your Chinese name?

What's your Korean name?"

I'm not Korean.

"Where are you from?"

I was asked that constantly as a kid.

Some people joked that we chose Memphis

because of Elvis, or because
of a similar climate.

Why my family ended up in
Memphis is because of war,

because of military,
because of domestic abuse.

My family started arriving in the 90s,

when Memphis started
sponsoring Vietnamese refugees.

- Hi grandpa

- Hearing my grandmother
just scream for no reason

in the middle of night because
a firework got set off,

or the news of the Oklahoma city bombing

is something that is very
familiar imagery for them.

It was just the ridiculousness

of how war really is not only embedded

in our land and borders, but
in ourselves and the kids,

people that came after our parents.

How do we talk about it?

How do we live with it at the same time?

(gentle music continues)

I always returned to Memphis.

Memphis is just like
that kind of nexus point

between mythology and history,

and sentimentality and memory.

And it's something to be
misremembered in a way.

Much of my work and my
family's history is just that,

it's bits and pieces.

It's a continuous sourcing
of information and materials,

and anything that we
can gleam of our past.

- Is it okay if we take your socks off?

- Take my socks off? Okay.

- Light looks good to me. I love it.

All right, I'm gonna just
do a quick one right now.

I started to use cutouts of myself

and the ambivalence of what it is exactly

is kind of in between those categories,

where it is a prop, it is
also an extension of me.

Can you turn your head
slightly to your right?

Thank you. Three, two, one.

It is kind of a reflection
of that fragmentation,

not of picking up bits and
pieces of my family's histories,

but the materials that present themselves

and the connections that come through.

They are very improvised
and come from my biography.

(upbeat music)

(indistinct chatter)

I started chasing Elvis tribute artists,

which is the politically correct term

for Elvis impersonators.

It's beyond this kind of
impersonation and imitation,

it becomes transcendent.

I wanted to make a body of work

and I wanted to be capable
of making a body of work

that was about representation,

that talked about pop culture

and the people's sense of the south

through these icons like Elvis.

And it has this kind of influence

in the way that the idea of Elvis,

the cut out of Elvis reverberates
through my other projects.

(indistinct chatter)

(gentle music)

I think a lot about that
photograph commemorating

the railroad and how they
pushed a lot of laborers,

and especially the Chinese
laborers, out of the picture.

And that kind of
invisibility has reverberated

throughout photographic history.

How do we see ourselves
when we are not represented?

I think it's a continuous
performance as well

to constantly search for where
do I stand in the picture?

What is the best way

to arrive at ourselves
through photography?

(gentle music continues)