Danh Vō: Banish the Faceless / Reward your Grace

Danh Vō’s  (Bà Ria, Vietnam, 1975) art work subverts and plays with classic appropriation and opportunistic strategies of Western art in its approach to other cultures. His installations, sculptures, photographs and works on paper, particularly his early work, often calls on his origins and experiences, interspersing them with cultural, social, and historical references.

In an empirical yet not deductive approach, the artist establishes connections between objects and ideas that open up new possibilities of seeing , collecting, presenting and implying new meanings that upset the predominant historical discourse. Language and sexuality operate as elements of transition between desire, aesthetic emotion, and critical interpretation, while Eros, religion, history and politics reciprocally confront and subvert each other in his pieces.

Danh Vō utilises 21st-century industrial exhibition typology to portray the unique architecture in the Palacio de Cristal, encapsulating the nostalgia of a nineteenth-century palaeontology and archaeology museum inside a large display cabinet.