Tommy Kha is a photographer who explores the self-portraiture, fragmentation, and humor that are part of the Asian American experience. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, Kha lives and works between New York City and Memphis, Tennessee, his birthplace. He holds an M.F.A. in photography from Yale University, where he currently teaches.
Kha’s work is in the collections of MoMA, SFMoMA, George Eastman House, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. His first solo museum show, “Other Things Uttered,” was held at the Addison Gallery of American Art in September 2025.
In 2023, Aperture published his first monograph “Half, Full, Quarter” following his solo shows “Ghost Bites” and “Má,” an ongoing, decade-long collaboration between the artist and his mother. Kha’s work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal as well as Hyperallergic, Interview, McSweeney’s, Vice, Pitchfork, Southern Cultures, Dazed, Foam, Butt Magazine, and Miranda July’s “We Think Alone.”
Kha is previously a recipient of the Hayes Prize, Next Step Award, Foam Talent, and NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Photography. He is a former resident at Pioneer Works, Lighthouse Works, Kinosaito, Light Work, and BAXTER ST (née Camera Club of New York).
He has had solo shows at Higher Pictures (which he joined in 2022), BAXTER ST, and Blue Sky Gallery. He has taught at the New School and Rutgers University and is a critic at Yale University. Currently, Kha studies kung fu under Sifu Ken Lo.
According to Kha, he “takes after his great aunt, who ‘read too many books and went crazy’."
Artist's website: tommykha.com
