untitled 1

Danh Vo’s untitled (2021) depicts an American flag torn and sullied by the stigmata of war. The flag appears thrown against a wall instead of stretched out to show all of its surface and motifs. It is in fact meticulously attached to allow the viewer to see a painting of the Virgin and Child through its folds and tears. This image, a symbol of purity and gentleness, is juxtaposed against the violent reality imprinted on the flag. Virgin and Child, an emblematic expression of love and faith, appears to float above the horrors of war as an ethereal presence in a ravaged world. 

With a radical displacement at the root of his own personal history, Danh Vo explores the contrast between the serenity of the Christian ideal and the brutality of war. In evoking the form of the iconostasis, he juxtaposes the inaccessible and the known, and the sacred and the profane. untitled (2021) is a meditation on the fragility in the face of violence, and it alerts us to the resilience of the human spirit and the persistence of tenderness, even amidst chaos.

The Pinault Collection showed this work for the first at the Icones exhibition at Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2023