- A one time Memphis art student from White Haven who brought hi s camera to local movie sets.

He's becoming a nationally known artist whose work explores the boundaries of self portraiture and the iconography of his hometown.

I'm Chris McCoy and this is A Conversation with Tommy Kha.

[soft music] We're here in Rust Hall, the former site of Memphis College of Art with Tommy Kha, who happens to be one of MAC's most prominent alumni.

Tommy, how's it feel to be back here?

- I don't know, it feels very, half expecting to see my classmates from undergrad to walk in and then realizing that we're all very late for class and that we definitely don't have morning classes on Tuesday mornings.

[laughs] Couldn't do that.

- You were born in Memphis, right?

- Born and raised.

I grew up in Whitehaven and went to Overton High School and then right after school I went to Memphis College of Art.

It's been mostly a straightforward trajectory for, yeah, okay, go pick up some art classes and then go to school for art and figure that out.

Which I guess I sort of learned in MCA and then leaving to go to Yale University for my graduate studies was a nice eye opener of, wow, I'm not very prepared for this as much as I thought I would be, but I was really glad to experience those things.

And I don't know, there was something very special about growing up by myself.

Mostly my family would travel a lot and I would watch the house and watch like soap operas, Hong Kong TV series and legal shows because it's so funny to me that the lawyers and judges, the barristers were wigs in Hong Kong judicial system, so that was really an experience there.

And not having, or being around people that look like me outside of my family, it was really kind of isolating, but also something unique to navigate the world of how people would interact with me, treat me or, I dunno, I think it was all very influential into what the kind of work I'm doing in my practice.

- Because you grew up like right around the corner from Graceland pretty much.

- Yeah, I was about a five minute drive.

I lived right off of Millbranch and Graceland was just a quick drive.

I went to Graceland Elementary School, which doesn't exist anymore, but I thought it was funny that I knew what Graceland was, but without having the Elvis or the history behind it, it was just the name of the school and then because of the neighborhood we were in.

And it was just kind of hilarious like how much of things I'm thinking about or working through right now have been like part of my beginnings forever.

And it's like through therapy, through art, through graduate school, which was basically an American Idol style, the way that we put up our work and be judged essentially was, I don't know.

It was a very unique experience of trying to figure that all out, but it was fun.

- This is the "this your life" segment of our show, Tommy.

This is a picture of you on a set of Woke Up Ugly taking still photographs.

Can you see it?

- Yes, very, very.

- So Woke Up Ugly was a film by Bart Shannon.

I guess this probably would've been like 10 years ago, maybe more than that.

- I would definitely say at least 12 years ago.

- At least 12 years ago.

- Yeah.

- And you were involved in the Digital Media Coop.

- Yeah, I met so many people, like in high school, my English teacher, Ms. Burt heard this ad for filmmaking workshops that Media Coop was doing out of the First Congregational Church.

Was it 1000 South Cooper Street?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Man, I can't believe I remember that.

- It was in the basement, they had a little theater.

- Nothing weird.

- Yeah, no, it wasn't weird at all.

Morgan John Fox and Brandon Hutchinson started it and it was, I think a whole lot of people who now make films in Memphis or they've gone on to other places, got their start there.

And there was a lot of, it's even difficult to describe now because this was a time when the tools of filmmaking that everybody carries in their pocket now were pretty rare.

So they had all the equipment and people like really flocked to it just to learn the absolute basics and there's a lot of really interesting experimental stuff that came out of there really early, which a lot of it was just people just learning.

- Yeah, I mean, it was fun to like do something, sixteen and hanging out with people or trying to make something and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and I think it was fun to just star in each other's like short films and help each other out.

Got murdered a bunch.

[Chris laughing] But I owe so much to, I guess, my beginning of Media Coop, I've like met people I would not have met if I was staying in school.

I eventually think I would've met them, but I met my first transgender person, Susie Crashcourse.

- Susie, yeah.

- Media Coop really introduced me to all kinds of people, Valerie June, like I saw a commercial that Coop made, Valerie, and was like, "Who's that?"

It's like, "Oh, that's Valerie.

She plays at Java Cabana on Thursday nights," and so hopefully it's not as creepy saying it now.

I just like showed up to meet her and that's how we've met.

- And y'all are really good friends now.

- Yeah, she's one of my best friends and we both like moved to New York relatively around the same time.

And after I graduated from Yale, she like dropped her album, Pushing Against the Stone, and it was just like not a lot of time has passed between us, like we're both trying to do our thing on our own and trying to carve that path.

- Speaking of New York, this is an image that was on the cover of the New York Times Magazine.

- Yes.

- Tell us about that, tell us about how that happened.

- Well, I definitely made that.

[Chris laughing] I ended up getting a call from my friend who's a photo editor and that was a thing that I started to do during the pandemic, was trying to go around.

And before then I was shopping my work around to magazines like Vice and end of list 'cause I can't think of more than that.

- Others.

- Definitely others I applied for, but I'm blanking on them now.

- And this is the cover story about Asian-American identity and it's a face, but the actual details of the face are obscured by a little photo montage and they're all kind of scrambled.

- Yeah, that was done by a really great Japanese artist, Kensuke Koike, but they had me photograph Asian bodies for two days and Kensuke would go in and do his, he's known for his collage work with found, ready made vintage photographs of portraits that one can pick up in their stores.

And he has such a great fun way of looking at pictures.

And since we both like work with cutouts, it made sense to pair us together.

It just turned out amazing to have that kind of collaboration, to illustrate this short story about how the Asian parent navigating having a child in the world that is half and having to navigate those two worlds and it's like, oh, yeah, that we all ended up doing that, for us, even if we're not half like Asian, was we're having to navigate those worlds like constantly.

I think that was something that is to set that up in the South is, I mean, there's just not many narratives about it.

Like we talked about Mystery Train the other night and how much of, I mean, I love that movie.

- I think something that you said, yeah, Mystery Train is a masterpiece.

If you haven't seen it, go out and find it right now.

But one thing that you said to me the other night was that when you were growing up people kept thinking that you were a tourist.

- Yeah, even when I come back here and visit, I feel so much of that mentality, that role, but like in high school and like even attending MCA here and I go to the coffee shop and people are like, "Oh, how long are you visiting?"

Like after just talking to me, me a random stranger to them and I'm like, "No, I'm just usually here working on stuff."

"It's really funny like what you tourists do."

Like are you saying Taurus like the star sign or like the tourists like you think I'm not from here.

It's like, all right, go on.

It's like, yeah, "Y'all just come through "and go to our grocery stores "'cause we just have so much of the food that y'all don't have."

I mean, there is the international section I guess, I mean, that was just something so constant with my life.

Even in elementary school at Graceland, we didn't have all that.

I was just surrounded by friends, kids from the neighborhood.

Race wasn't a thing, but like looking back, I was the only person that was not black and that was awesome 'cause none of that mattered to us.

We were just like, no one treated me differently.

And that was my experience in Graceland, in Whitehaven.

- Okay, so here's another one.

This is an early one that is, - Oh man.

- Self-portraiture.

- Yeah, is one of my first, what's that word for it?

My entrance into self-portraiture, turning the camera to myself.

- That is you as a business person.

- Oh man.

- In the boardroom.

- That was one of the first pictures I did.

And when I moved to New York City 12 years ago, MCA sent me to live in New York first semester just to experience the art world.

And I've was influenced by performance art so heavily during that time, like Tino Sehgal at Guggenheim, What is Progress?

Marina Abramovic was doing The Artist's Present.

And I wasn't sure like what those things were 'cause we definitely did not have those.

We definitely learned about it.

Like, oh, this is something people did in the '60s and which is not true.

Before then people were theatrical before.

- So this one I love.

- Yes.

- That is in the P and H, which is no longer there.

Talking about another lamented and past Memphis institution.

The P and H Cafe on Madison in Midtown, which was a big arts and theater hangout.

And that's you with, that's Robert, is that guy's name, isn't it, I think?

- Robert Fortner.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I love like the P and H and I love Robert 'cause he was such a very intimidating looking dude.

- But he's a painter.

- He's a painter and he is like the sweetest dude ever.

Like he was really down to like pose and like sit there and I was shooting with a four by five camera that had the bellows with it, like the accordion fold.

- Oh wow.

- Yeah, and to shoot that in a very low lit bar and to do that, that's like they're running their business, they're going about their day.

And so I'm very thankful for a lot of friends to put up with my shenanigans that we call art.

- Speaking of people putting up with your shenanigans.

- Yep, there is my mom.

I think it's easier if I dress up too and just also be part of that process, and not to embarrass myself or embarrass my mom, to really even the playing field, like I'm photographing other people, like I really have to put myself through the ringer in some sense to be just as vu lnerable or get to that point.

But man, this is an indicative of my family putting up with me.

And this is how families will love you and my siblings will ask like, "How do you like photograph?

I wanna photograph my parents."

Well, you kind of do because they can't really say no to you if they love you, unconditionally.

So it's a bit of trying to teach students to guilt trip their loved ones.

That's not what I do, I swear.

- Speaking of love, the next few pictures we have here are from the kissing portraits.

- Yes, oh Sonia.

I feel like I remember all the kisses from that project.

- And that went on for a while, you had several of these, here's another one, initially in front of the arcade.

- That was the most recent one last year.

It's something I'm just gonna continue doing until I'm on my deathbed.

- And here's Bart, you and Bart Shannon in front of Ernestine Hazel's.

Bart directed the Woke Up Ugly that we mentioned a few minutes ago.

- Yes, oh man.

Yeah, it's funny like how many taller people just end up picking me up like just unfounded.

Like Bart never saw the previous picture of people picking me up.

So it's like they just do it on their own without me asking them to do that.

Brett Magevitz did the same too.

It's just like why does everyone want a Lois Lane me?

Just like pick me up, am I just portable?

- Speaking of portable, I love this one, this is a mask of you and yo u've done that several times.

- Yeah, I mean, it's something I'm currently working on, it's a picture of a picture, I don't Photoshop anything 'cause I already spend so much time behind the computer.

- You've also documented Elvis impersonators for a long time.

It's usually when you end up coming back to town is during Elvis week.

And in the past.

- Working in that is something that kind of carried over to my other projects and now they're kind of blending in with each other.

And the mask, I was working with cardboard cutouts of myself 'cause I was really tired of going back and forth behind the camera and then for front of the camera and it was just like.

- And massive puzzles too, made puzzles outta yourself, which I think is fascinating.

- I was seeing like these Elvis tr ibute artists going around and doing really cool thing of being beyond copying, being beyond imitating, and they are molding themselves, their voiced, their hips, the way that they move their bodies in the space, it's like, that is art to me.

And I dunno, it kind of sort of related to what I was doing with photographing myself, is like how to talk about representation, how do you talk about image, photography has a really big role in that.

And it's just kind of started coming together and every like August happens to be my grandma's birthday, my best friend Luke White's birthday and it falls in the same week as Elvis week.

So it was like made sense to return and to go and approach the work differently every time 'cause I've never really meet the same ETA, like just out in the world.

I always hoped to see the same person.

And then at the beginning it was that way.

And then it was just like every year I meet someone new and they're just artists themselves and it made so much sense thematically with what I was thinking in my work.

- So how you can always tell that you made it is when you make the cover of the Memphis Flyer.

This is from March 31st of this year and it is about something that happened to Tommy.

So they're rebuilding the concourse at the airport.

- Yeah.

- And you and a lot of other artists were asked to put pieces in it and they purchased these pieces.

- Yeah, there was a budget and the way they approached it was the airport were redesigning one of their concourse and wanting to showcase artists that have a connection to Memphis, local, or people have made work here.

And it was great opportunity to be in a show that it's usually hard for me to be included in exhibitions because I'm kind of a weird wild card on the art world, like I'm queer, I'm Asian, I'm from the south, and then there's, how a lot of people like things tied in a package neatly.

And I'm not one of those packages or someone that likes to be tied.

- So you went through a few images before you decided to use this one.

- Well, technically the selection committee picked those.

I did like propose instead of the kissing pictures.

- They weren't going with that.

- Yeah, I could see the uncomfortability or like the conversation that might happen.

So I declined and a while later they proposed those two pieces.

- And it's perfect because of your Elvis obsession.

- Yes.

- And so it's deeply Memphis, you are deeply Memphis 'cause you're from here, you're from Memphis as well.

And this to me, and so this is the cardboard cutout here.

So this is not even really you.

- Yeah, this is my commitment to not photoshopping anything in my work.

- All on camera.

- Yeah, just carrying my cardboard cutouts in my carry on and then explaining that to the TSA.

It's like, this is art, this is art, it will be.

- It's pre-art.

- But that's like how I've been operating the last few years.

I mean, that image was made a while ago, but both of those pictures were made outside of the state of Tennessee, outside of Memphis because of my obsession and like trying to look for a sense of home wherever I am, is like, oh, this reminds me of Memphis.

This reminds me of that aesthetic, that reminds me of like how my neighbors would hang stuff in their place.

And it was really such an honor to like have those pictures up and then among people who taught me here at MCA, who were my classmates, who were part of like a community that I felt I was included in.

- And I think generally when you go to the concourse B now, like it's a really good selection of Memphis art.

There's a lot of great stuff in there.

- Yeah.

- But.

- I didn't think that picture would elicit that kind of response.

- What kind of response did it elicit?

- After a month, there were some complaints that were coming through and I was just ignoring them.

I don't have Facebook, but I somehow come across one of them.

- Bless you.

- Yeah.

And suddenly the work came down.

- They took it down because they said they had a lot of emails, a lot of complaints.

As Eileen Townsend who's the writer who did this story for the Flyer pointed out it was only a few people who were doing what's called brigading, which is, online like mob scene basically, where they try to make it look like there's a lot more of them than there really are.

What was so baffling to me about it is that this is clearly an affectionate image.

It's not disrespectful of Elvis or Memphis at all.

It's like you're identifying with Elvis and I think that's what's so beautiful about what Elvis has become, is that people identify with him, they want to dress up like him, they want to be like him.

- Yeah, I think there is one of the comments about it, it was making fun, is like, I don't make fun of him.

This community is, especially in relation to photographing Elvis tribute artists, like these are friends of mine, acquaintances, like I never wanna disparage anybody.

- No, you take these people seriously.

That's one of the things that I really enjoy about that series of yours.

You take 'em seriously as artists.

You take 'em seriously as human beings and you see this expression of them when they're dressing up as Elvis, like this is their best selves, this is trying to be great.

- A lot of people who weren't in that world, we call them Elvis impersonators and it's like that's not the correct term.

They prefer to be called tribute artists because it's art.

It transcends all of that.

If anyone, it's mean that's the impersonator that is always like coming back to how I don't belong.

How that cutout doesn't belong in that picture.

How that is all a metaphor for trying to find a place where I do fit in.

And I guess the conversation kind of reinforce that, in some way the removal of my work reinforce that.

It's kind of a feeling I don't think I can shake and has like affected the process of if I wanna continue making that work.

And right now I think the conversation has been so important to have because this kind of thing isn't the first time that happened to artists.

And while it has worked out for me 'cause after, I don't think anyone expected me to say anything about that situation because people are, especially younger artists don't wanna say anything in fear that if saying something might damage their career.

And for me, I was so opposite of happy that it has fueled my obsession to just try to make sure that doesn't happen.

But pointing out that there are people in place that shouldn't be telling us what art can be or what it is and it was just a really weird wine stain that they tried to clean up and it was just made bigger.

[Chris laughing] And right now I feel better about having said something because the community response was just amazing, that people I haven't talked to in years that came out and supported me.

Craig Brewer who gave me my first job doing still photography on film sets called and checked in on me, asked me questions, like what happened?

Yeah, I want that for other people, for other artists that might be going through something like this, it might not be at censorship level, but I know that people who don't have the same network and support system like I do, are probably experiencing it and I don't want that to happen.

So I guess that's the weird epilogue of that airport controversy.

- Well, it's back up in the airport now.

You can see it when you fly out.

This has been a really great conversation, Tommy.

And I appreciate you very much.

We love you here in Memphis and we hope to see you back.

When you can make it back?

- I'm back a lot and I split my time as much as I can.

And I love Memphis, I love the people here.

I love my friends, my community, my family's here.

And there's a lot of work that can be done that is exciting that other people are doing here and I'm really hoping that the landscape can be changed for the better.

- Tommy, thanks for everything and keep being fabulous.

And this has been A Conversation with Tommy Kha.

And I'm Chris McCoy.

[soft music] [acoustic guitar chords]