Theresa Chong was born in Seoul, Korea and immigrated to Fairbanks, Alaska where she spent most of her years painting, drawing, and practicing cello. She spent a year at Oberlin Conservatory as a cello performance major and transferred to Boston University’s School of Fine Arts receiving her BFA in painting in 1989 and her MFA in painting at the School of Visual Arts in 1991.

Theresa Chong has been represented by Danese/Corey Gallery in New York City since 1997. She had solo exhibitions at Danese/Corey in 1998, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2014. She is also represented by Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas, Texas where she had a solo exhibition in 2013. Her prints are represented by the Lower East Side Print Shop in NYC. 

Chong’s work was in an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City in an exhibition titled, "The Draftsman's Colors: 14 New Acquisitions from Johns to Chong,” March 3-July 8, 2001. During 2003 and 2004, her paintings were included in the American Embassy art collection exhibition in Seoul, Korea. Her drawings were also included in the exhibition at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco titled, “The Master Drawings from the Goldyne Collection" from March 4-June 4, 2006. She participated in a three-person show in an inauguration exhibition at the College of Saint Rose Art in honor of the new Massry Center for the Arts, Albany, NY, February 2008. Her work was included in an exhibition at the Aspen Museum in Aspen, Colorado in 2008. In the summer of 2013, her print was included in an exhibition titled, “Playing with Process: Exploration in Experimental Printmaking”, curated by Rebecca A. Dunham in Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. Most recently, a large body of her work was included in a group exhibition at the New Visual Arts Exhibition at Walton Arts Center’s Joy Pratt Markham Gallery from Oct. 5 through Dec. 23, 2017. This exhibition titled, “Charting Terrain: AConfluence of Light and Form”, included other artists: Victoria Burge, Ben Butler, Sean Morrissey, James Siena and James Turrell.

Theresa Chong received reviews and interviews from books and journals in 560 Broadway: A New York Drawing Collection at Work, 1991-2006 Fifth Floor Foundation, New York in Association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2008, Unframed, Artists Respond to Aids By CRIA, PowerHouse Books, NYC, 2002, Theresa Chong Addresses Space in Flux by Eileen Tabios, The Asian Pacific American Journal, Winter/Spring 1999, The Saints of Modern Art, by Charles Riley II Ph.D., and University Press of New England, 1999. Her reviews from magazines, and newspapers include: “Exhibit Tracks the Trend of Mapping Out Truth and Beauty”,  The Boston Globe by Cate McQuaid, Friday, January 21, 2005, Art in America by Edward Leffingwell, May 2004, The New Yorker, by Edward Leffingwell, October 6, 2003, Art Asia Pacific, Issue 37, 2003 by Jonathan Goodman, The New York Times, by Ken Johnson Friday Oct 12, 2001, Flash Art, by Sarah Valdez, Summer 1998, and, artpress, by Robert C. Morgan, June 1998. 

Her work is in the public art collection of: Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, Yale University Art Gallery, in New Haven, CT, and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Deloitte & Touche in San Francisco, CA, General Dynamics, Inc. in Falls Church, VA, Pfizer, Inc.in New York City, Progressive Corporation Art Collection in Mayfield Village in Ohio, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, and Werner Kramarsky’s Fifth Floor Foundation in New York City.