Danh Vo

(b. 1975)

Danh Vo’s sculptures and installations question icons and myths of nationhood and war. Born in Vietnam and raised in Denmark, Vo is currently based in Berlin and Mexico City. Many of his works deal with American histories of military violence, financialization, and cultural imperialism. Autoerotic Asphyxiation (2010), Vo’s first solo exhibition in the US, presented an archive of photos of young Asian men taken by an American RAND Corporation worker in the 1960s and 1970s; his show Mother Tongue (2013) assembled the personal belongings of Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. As part of Vo’s 2012 exhibition Uterus at the Renaissance Society, fragments of his 2010–12 project We the People, in which the artist recreated the Statue of Liberty, were exhibited across the University of Chicago campus, including at the Law School, Booth School of Business, and Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC).