Danh Vō

Danh Vō is a Vietnamese artist who grew up in Denmark and lives in Berlin, and has developed an intense set of work in which he combines reflection on the traumatic past of Vietnam with a conceptual sophisticated language and a precise and extremely accurate formal resolution.

The work displayed here is a fragment of the huge installation We the People, presented for the first time in Denmark in 2013, and in Portugal at Culturgest Porto, an exhibition curated by Óscar Faria.

The work consists of a fragment of the Statue of Liberty reproduced at a scale of 1:1, made of very fine bronze, with this choice revealing the fragility of popular autocracy, either in the U.S. or in any part of the world. Particularly incisive as to the current situation of the world, the participation of Danh Vō also includes a drawing that is the result of his own discovery of a letter written by a missionary to his father before he was shot, and reproduced by the artist’s father. The universality of the proposal refers to the complexity of social and affective relations tinged by the violence of the war or, in the case of Danh Vō, by exile.