Untitled

Danh Vo’s installation Untitled, 2021 combines various materials and different periods, as is often the case with his work: a modern refrigerator made of glass containing bronze feet moulded from those of Heinz Peter Knes, a photographer and the artist’s partner. These two overlapping feet evoke those of the crucified Christ, with a modern twist: the toenails are painted. Above the refrigerator sits part of a marble head dating from the first century that depicts a young Roman slave and which rests on a granite block.

Danh Vo, an artist of Vietnamese and Danish nationality, the child of boat people who emigrated to this Scandinavian country, is the fruit of a radical displacement through his own personal history. This decisive event has obliged him to adapt to and live between two cultures, but his unique history is also ours, as he explains. In one way or another, each one of us bears traces of the destruction of the Vietnam War, Christian evangelism, the political conflicts between the West and other regions, and the diversity of our origins. The elements brought together here create a resonance between historical and personal figures, faraway cultures, and a variety of materials. Through their arrangement, the work questions the process by which individual and collective identities are constructed.

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