Vo, Danh (VN/DK)
Carlsberg Tap E
Danh Vo
Born 1975 in Ba Ria, Vietnam
Lives in Berlin
Danh Vo's projects frequently contrive to intertwine his artist's role with his private life, his family history and his love life, while managing to create confusion about his relations with other artists along the way.
For the work My Father, Tobias Rehberger and Me (2004), Vo persuaded the German artist Tobias Rehberger to execute a work which, while taking its thematic inspiration from Vo's background, is modelled on one of Rehberger's projects, which involved getting small-scale welders in the Far East to produce copies of Western luxury cars. Vo asked Rehberger to create a replica of the boat in which Vo's family fled at the end of the Vietnam War. Moreover, Vo's father's considerable part in the project included the practical business of fundraising, overseeing the boat's construction and finding extras to act as boat refugees. But the agreement specified that the work should be credited to Rehberger.
Rehberger's own earlier piece brought into focus the global economy's problematic divisions between those who have all the say and all the rights and rake in the money, and those who do all the work. However, the new work illuminates further, more complex, aspects of this issue, since it was Vo who foisted upon Rehberger the theft of his dramatic life story, his artistic originality and his father's labour: theft shrouded in secrecy in that the work was presented as Tobias Rehberger's own with no reference to Vo - thereby demonstrating that the inequalities that Rehberger had originally depicted as rampant in the global economy also exist in the art world.
Cultural exchange is also the primary theme of Vo's contribution to U-TURN. Here he presents an installation consisting of objects and documents found in Vietnam. These objects reflect the American influence and the impact of the Vietnam War on local culture - a handmade carpet where bombs and helicopters have been woven into the motif, or a photo of a Vietnamese man carrying the Statue of Liberty as a tattoo on his arm. This way, Danh Vo emphasizes the cultural translation process that follows in the wake of many years of positive as well as negative influence on another culture. -NH
Lives in Berlin
Danh Vo's projects frequently contrive to intertwine his artist's role with his private life, his family history and his love life, while managing to create confusion about his relations with other artists along the way.
For the work My Father, Tobias Rehberger and Me (2004), Vo persuaded the German artist Tobias Rehberger to execute a work which, while taking its thematic inspiration from Vo's background, is modelled on one of Rehberger's projects, which involved getting small-scale welders in the Far East to produce copies of Western luxury cars. Vo asked Rehberger to create a replica of the boat in which Vo's family fled at the end of the Vietnam War. Moreover, Vo's father's considerable part in the project included the practical business of fundraising, overseeing the boat's construction and finding extras to act as boat refugees. But the agreement specified that the work should be credited to Rehberger.
Rehberger's own earlier piece brought into focus the global economy's problematic divisions between those who have all the say and all the rights and rake in the money, and those who do all the work. However, the new work illuminates further, more complex, aspects of this issue, since it was Vo who foisted upon Rehberger the theft of his dramatic life story, his artistic originality and his father's labour: theft shrouded in secrecy in that the work was presented as Tobias Rehberger's own with no reference to Vo - thereby demonstrating that the inequalities that Rehberger had originally depicted as rampant in the global economy also exist in the art world.
Cultural exchange is also the primary theme of Vo's contribution to U-TURN. Here he presents an installation consisting of objects and documents found in Vietnam. These objects reflect the American influence and the impact of the Vietnam War on local culture - a handmade carpet where bombs and helicopters have been woven into the motif, or a photo of a Vietnamese man carrying the Statue of Liberty as a tattoo on his arm. This way, Danh Vo emphasizes the cultural translation process that follows in the wake of many years of positive as well as negative influence on another culture. -NH