Instead, the
Vietnamese-born Danish conceptual artist sat quietly on stage, occasionally
sipping a glass of water, as American scholar Joshua Chambers-Letson delivered
an erudite study of his art, accompanied by slides and a video. The session -
the festival’s opening event - had been billed as a “conversation”.
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| Danh Vo. (Photo: M. Engelund) |
Afterwards, the
audience was perhaps too dumbfounded to ask questions, so artist and scholar
left the stage with a simple “thank you”.
The message
seemed to be this: an artist doesn’t need to speak, as his or her output already
says volumes. And why talk anyway when there is an expert to do so for you?
In
the case of Vō, his iconoclastic installations do tell stories – about
migration, struggle, resistance, individualism, history.
In one notable
work, for instance, he created art from the refrigerator, television set and
other items that his grandmother received as an immigrant to Europe, thus
depicting her journey via his presentation.
In another, the
main object is a chandelier that might have come from some palace or castle.
Viewers are invited to question its meaning.
“I see my work
as sculptures,” Vō told SWAN in an interview at the festival, after agreeing to
discuss his art. “When you look at the chandelier, you don’t see the castle,
but it’s all there too - the history, the colonialism. Our vision gets easily
blurred, so the real work is to continuously remember to look at things. We
close our eyes too often.”
Born in Bà Ria,
Vietnam, in 1975, Vō was still a child when his family fled the war-torn Asian
country in a homemade boat. They were rescued at sea and eventually settled in
Denmark, according to his media biography.
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Danh Vo and scholar Joshua Chambers-Letson on stage.
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The
assimilation into European culture and the events in Vietnam that forced the
departure have influenced his art, with a critic noting that Vō’s work exposes
the “intertwining of collective history and intimate experience that shape our
individuality”.
An intriguing
aspect of his art is also the way he addresses colonialism by using objects
associated with this history - such as the chandelier or a throne-like chair.
During the interview, he joked that some of the furnishings at the Chateau de
Fontainbleau (where the festival was held) would make a good artistic
narrative.
Such objects, Vō
believes, accumulate a “symbolic burden”, and by interacting with them, viewers
can examine their own history and heritage.
Vō said he was
often urged not to cling to the past while growing up, but he thinks the
avoidance of history can be a problem for personal development. “There are
traps on both sides - being immersed in the past as well as being determined
not to look back,” he told SWAN. “We have to find a balance.”
At the
Festival, he was representing Denmark, as the Nordic countries (Denmark,
Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) were the guest of honour at the event. He
said he embraces his various identities, seeing this as enrichment, and the
multiplicity of perspectives does add to the impact of his work.
“The idea that
people don’t move is a crazy concept,” he said. “We’ve been led to believe it -
that territories are for some and not others.”
Vō and his art
are in fact constantly on the move, with exhibitions in Asia, the United States
and Europe. In France, Paris’ Museum of Modern Art held a major show of his
work in 2013, and last year he was a featured artist at Bordeaux’s contemporary
art museum, the CAPC.
But not
everyone gets his work. After the presentation at the Festival, a member of the
audience told SWAN that “all this talk about colonialism was not interesting”
and that it was “pointless” to keep bringing up the past. “That lecture was
awful, horrendous,” the spectator said.
It’s a reaction
that is familiar to artists and scholars who address colonialism. “Being in
France is always a learning experience for me,” Vō said. “I like to see what
the reaction is to my work.” - SWAN