Danh Vō Confronts Belgium’s Colonial History in His Latest Solo Show in Brussels
Danh Vō, detail of untitled, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
Danh Vō’s work is often easy to recognize, yet difficult to immediately grasp. The Vietnamese-born Danish artist works primarily with appropriated ready-mades and artifacts containing religious, political, and pop cultural significance. At first glance, his sculptures may appear like haphazard assemblages. Oma Totem (2009), for example, features a bulky television stacked above a mini fridge adorned with a large crucifix, and supported by a washing machine. Viewers who stay with the work, rather than dismiss it, are rewarded with Vō’s insights on Western consumerism and the ulterior motives of Catholic missionary programs.
Vō’s current eponymous solo exhibition of all new works, on view at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels until December 18th, is similarly rich in references that slowly unravel for inquisitive audiences. Within the context of the Brussels gallery, Vō subtly taps into Belgian history, specifically the role of art and artists under the country’s colonial rule.
Danh Vō, installation view of untitled, 2021, at Xavier Hufkens, 2021. Photo by Allard Bovenberg. Courtesy of the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
In one untitled 2021 work featured in the show, Vō encased nasturtium plants, kept alive under grow lights, within a vitrine. Critically, the vitrine, circa 1890, was designed by Belgian architect Paul Hankar, one of the key figures of Art Nouveau, which originated in Brussels. At the World’s Fair of 1897, held in Brussels, Hankar designed the Ethnographic Hall: an exposition of colonial spoils taken from Congolese regions under Belgian rule and exhibited without accurate context. It’s also worth noting that the Art Nouveau movement was able to flourish to the extent that it did due to a period of economic prosperity attributed to Belgium’s imperial exploitation in the Congo. Vō further underscores this lesser known or acknowledged history by incorporating nasturtiums—symbols of patriotism, victory, and conquest—in his work.
Other pieces in Vō’s exhibition may feel more familiar to viewers. Dispersed across the gallery are deteriorating sculptures of Christ dating back to the 16th century: One is the remaining torso of an unrecognizable sculpture of Christ; another is the head of Christ with an identifiable crown of thorns, but his face has been smoothly sawed off. It’s unclear whether such blasphemous mutilations are a result of time and natural decay or an intervention by Vō, whose father converted to Catholicism in 1963 (in protest after the assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, who was Catholic and the first president of South Vietnam).
Danh Vō, untitled, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
Danh Vō, detail of untitled, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
Other works, which anachronistically meld the past with the contemporary, more clearly demonstrate Vō’s hand. Meat cables (2021), for example, features a dismembered 16th-century Cupid sculpture and a Roman marble sculpture carefully packed in a Rimowa suitcase. Meanwhile, an untitled 2021 work shows a 16th-century limewood relief depicting Salome with the head of St. John the Baptist set inside an empty crate for Campbell’s mock turtle soup.
Composed of materials that have their own place in history, Vō’s oeuvre questions the legibility of artistic authorship, and recontextualizes the past to consider what’s left outside of dominant historical narratives.
