Black and Blue
for single winds, horn, trumpet, percussion, harp, electric guitar, string quintet

I chose 8 images from the collection “Black and Blue” (1976) by the Berkeley-based Korean American artist Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha (1951-1982). The first image to be projected is a blank page stamped “Black and Blue” in black ink. The next image is playful: “blacks and blues” and the following four images are various repetitions and configurations of “Black and Blue.” The final two images obscure the text with blue watercolor. In an archived type-written letter to a friend written when she began the “Black and Blue” series, Cha wrote “I got the blues black and blue bruises, so begins one of my stamp pieces.” In both early and later drafts of the work, Cha used not just the words “Black and Blue” but also “Bruise” and “Heartache.”