Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Teacher Resource Unit

The first comprehensive survey in the United States of work by Danish artist Danh Vo (b. 1975, Bà Rịa, Vietnam) offers an illuminating overview of the artist’s production from 2003 to the present.

Vo’s installations dissect the cultural forces, power structures, and private desires that shape our experience of the world. His work addresses themes of artistic authorship, capitalism, colonialism, and religion, but presents these sweeping subjects through intimate personal narratives—what the artist calls the “tiny diasporas of a person’s life.” 1 Each project grows out of a period of intense research in which fortuitous encounters, historical study, and personal relationships are woven into psychologically potent tableaux. Subjected to Vo’s vivid processes of deconstruction and recombination, found objects, documents, and images become registers of latent histories and sociopolitical fissures.

FEBRUARY 9–MAY 9, 2018

Danh VoTake My Breath Away

Funding for Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away is provided by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

Additional support is provided by the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Obel Family Foundation, the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, Beckett-Fonden, and the Danish Arts Foundation.

The Leadership Committee for this exhibition is gratefully acknowledged for its support, with special thanks to Mara and Marcio Fainziliber, Cochairs; Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, London, Paris; kurimanzutto, Mexico City; Robert Soros; Inigo Philbrick and Francisca Mancini; The Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation; Murray Alexander Abramson; Peter Bentley Brandt; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York; Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; Xavier Hufkens; and The Jamil Collection.

The catalogue for this exhibition is supported by the New Carlsberg Foundation.

Funding for Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away is provided by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

Additional support is provided by the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Obel Family Foundation, the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, Beckett-Fonden, and the Danish Arts Foundation.

The Leadership Committee for this exhibition is gratefully acknowledged for its support, with special thanks to Mara and Marcio Fainziliber, Cochairs; Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, London, Paris; kurimanzutto, Mexico City; Robert Soros; Faurschou Foundation; Inigo Philbrick and Francisca Mancini; The Pritzker Traubert Foundation; Murray Alexander Abramson; Peter Bentley Brandt; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York; Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; Xavier Hufkens; The Jamil Collection; and Naomi Milgrom and John Kaldor.

The catalogue for this exhibition is supported by the New Carlsberg Foundation.

The exhibition includes installations, photographs, and works on paper from various points of the artist’s career. Significant subjects include the legacy of colonialism and the fraught status of the refugee. In particular, Vo has focused on European and American influences in Southeast Asia and Latin America, examining the relationship between military interventions and more diffuse cultural incursions from forces such as evangelical Catholicism and consumer brands. The objects used in his work are frequently charged by knowledge of their former ownership or presence at historical events. Whether presenting the intimate possessions of his family members, a series of thank-you notes from former secretary of state Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), or the chandeliers that glittered above the 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords, which marked the American withdrawal from the Vietnam War, Vo subtly probes the internal tensions embedded in his material. A sustained focus of the work has been the image of the United States in its own collective imagination and in that of the world—a central topic of this exhibition.

This Resource Unit parallels some of the themes in the exhibition and provides techniques for exploring both the visual arts and other areas of the curriculum. Images of the works included in this guide are available on the museum’s website at guggenheim.org/artscurriculum and can be downloaded or projected for classroom use. The images may be used for education purposes only and are not licensed for commercial applications of any kind. Before bringing your class to the Guggenheim, we invite you to visit the museum, read the guide, and decide what aspects of the exhibition are most relevant to your students. For more information and to schedule a class visit, call 212 423 3637.

This exhibition is organized by Katherine Brinson, Daskalopoulos Curator, Contemporary Art, with Susan Thompson, Associate Curator.

< ABOUT THE ARTIST >

Danh Vo was born in Bà Rịa, Vietnam, in 1975. His family fled postwar Vietnam when the artist was four years old. A group of friends and neighbors led by Vo’s father traveled in a handmade boat hoping to find eventual refuge in the United States. After being rescued at sea by a Danish shipping freighter, his family settled in Denmark where they were granted political asylum and citizenship. Vo later attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and graduated from the Städelschule in Frankfurt in 2005. Vo’s work draws upon many individual biographies, including his own, as well as facets of political history and social memory to dissect the various forces that affect our lives in ways both overt and unexamined.

Vo uses a series of related strategies to analyze the structures and processes that shape our identities, such as the American Dream, capitalist culture, civic bureaucracy, colonial history, migration, and religion. He reconfigures objects to create tableaux that probe the relationships between people, their belongings, and their identities. In works such as If you were to climb the Himalayas tomorrow (2006) and Das Beste oder Nichts (2010), commercially valuable objects—including a Rolex watch and a

Mercedes-Benz car that Vo’s father prized—become material for his art. In other works, the artist considers commonplace objects as silent historical witnesses, which accrue layers of meaning from their proximity to important historical figures and events. He disassembles items acquired from auctions and third parties, refashioning them in evocative new arrangements. In these instances, including 16:32, 26.05 (2009) and Lot 20. Two Kennedy Administration Cabinet Room Chairs (2013), his reconceived displays examine how historical figures, institutions, and events affect the course of individual lives and might hold the potential for multiple, conflicting interpretations.

“Things that you know so well that are so familiar to you,” the artist has said, “[can be made] unfamiliar with very, very simple information.” 3 Vo makes what is familiar appear strange by presenting commonplace and personal objects in new combinations and situations. In doing so, he asks the viewer to reconsider the items’ layers and associations. For Vo, information gained from these new contexts can rupture our established ideas about history, identity, and politics, as well as our own positions within and knowledge of these complex systems.

History is important because it is about the present and shapes the future. Those who control history also control the present. I mistrust history because it is mostly the product of someone’s contemporary agenda. 2

I see myself, like any other person, as a container that has inherited these infinite traces of history without inheriting any direction. 4

< OMA TOTEM > < DAS BESTE ODER NICHTS >

Danh Vo often employs seemingly mundane objects to meld personal biographical narratives with global political histories. While Vo at times intervenes in the objects he selects, deconstructing and recombining them, at other moments they are endowed with new meanings solely through the act of their selection and recontextualization as artworks. He identifies objects associated with figures of historical or personal significance, emphasizing otherwise hidden meanings and histories. The objects in his work include historical artifacts, mass-market commodities, documents, letters, and photographs, all of which provide material form to the relationship between global events and individual people. Vo weaves broad themes like colonialism, nationalism, or a notion of “America” into his work, along with personal details gleaned from the people and objects that are close to him and that he encounters during his process of research.

In 2009 Vo stacked a television set onto a refrigerator, which was placed on a washing machine, and attached a large crucifix to the door of the fridge. This work, Oma Totem, is composed from objects given to the artist’s grandmother, Nguyễn Thị Ty, by an immigrant relief program upon her arrival in West Germany in 1980. Made with the actual appliances and crucifix that were part of the artist’s grandmother’s home, the found objects in Oma Totem were once used, touched, and examined every day. 5

Created in 2010, Das Beste oder Nichts presents a portrait of worldly success in the West as

filtered through the immigrant experience, and demonstrates the centrality of familial relationships within Vo’s work. The Mercedes-Benz engine is from a car owned by the artist’s father, Phung Vo, who escaped postwar Vietnam with his family on a boat carrying over one hundred other refugees. The Vo family emigrated to Denmark after their vessel was picked up by a Danish commercial ship. Das Beste oder Nichts represents an unaltered artifact of his father’s determination to achieve assimilation as defined by Western capitalism. 6 In an earlier work from 2006, If you were to climb the Himalayas tomorrow, Vo similarly enlists his father’s possessions—including a gold Rolex watch, a Dupont lighter, and an American military class ring—in a tableau that collectively illustrates Phung Vo’s measurement of his own achievements.

Oma Totem, 2009. Phillips television set, Gorenje washing machine, Bomann refrigerator, wooden crucifix, and personal casino entrance card, 86 5/8 x 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 inches (220 x 60 x 60 cm). Private collection, Turin © Danh Vo. photo: Jacopo Menzani, courtesy the artist and Galleria Zero, Milan; Das Beste oder Nichts, 2010. Engine of Phung Vo’s Mercedes-Benz 190, 26 x 40 x 81 inches (66 x 101.6 x 205.7 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director’s Council 2011.56 © Danh Vo. photo: Kristopher McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Show: Oma Totem, 2009

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Can students identify the objects in this work? How is this work similar to or different from sculptures that they are familiar with?

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The title of this work is Oma Totem. “Oma” means “grandma” in German. When the artist’s grandmother emigrated from Vietnam to Europe, she was given these goods by an organization that helps immigrants. How does this knowledge alter their first impressions of the work? What do these objects have in common? Why did the immigrant relief organization select these objects for refugees? What does it say about what immigrants might expect from life in the West and what might be expected of them?

Show: Das Beste oder Nichts, 2010

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What are the students looking at? Can they identify the object in this work? How is this work similar to or different from sculptures that they are familiar with?

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The title of this work is Das Beste oder Nichts, a German phrase that means "The Best or Nothing,” which is the slogan for the automobile manufacturer Mercedes-Benz. Danh Vo’s father viewed owning a Mercedes-Benz car as a symbol of having “made it” after immigrating to Denmark from Vietnam. This work is the engine removed from the artist’s father’s car. How does this knowledge alter their first impressions of the work? Why did the artist decide to show only the engine?

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Compare and contrast Das Beste oder Nichts with Oma Totem. What do they have in common? How are they different?

VIEW + DISCUSSEXPLORATIONSFURTHER EXPLORATIONS

• Every object in the world has both physical characteristics (color, dimensions, material, shape, etc.) and a history of events accumulated over time. To explore these two aspects, ask each student to bring a personally memorable and portable object to class. It is important that they not talk about the object in advance, and each student should work with a partner. First, ask the partnered students to exchange objects, so that everyone has a personally unfamiliar object. Request one of the students in each pair to describe the unknown object’s physical characteristics in as much detail as possible for about a minute. Then the other student should do the same with the object that they have been given. The owner of the object is not allowed to speak during this time—only to listen. Return the object to its owner and repeat the process, except this time the owner of the object should describe everything about the object that cannot be known only by looking at it. Then the other student should do the same. Discuss what the differences were between the first and second descriptions. Which conversation did they prefer, and why? How are the two conversations related? What can we learn about ourselves and our relationship to the objects in our life from this exercise? How does this exercise relate to Oma Totem and Das Beste oder Nichts?

• Vo has since created a relief of Oma Totem’s facade in bronze, granite, marble, and wood. It currently marks his grandmother’s grave. He has also created a black granite iteration carved with golden text borrowed from the tombstone of poet John Keats (1795–1821). The phrase reads: “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.” This black granite tombstone is intended to mark the grave of the artist’s father, Phung Vo, when he passes. Phung frequently collaborates on projects with his son. 7 A memorial can range from the offering of a single flower to erecting a large-scale permanent monument. It can honor an event, a person, a group of people, or even a beloved pet. Ask your students to think about something or someone that they would like to pay tribute to. Then sketch the design and consider what material(s) would be best to use. How large or small will it be? Will it be permanent or last for only a short time? Where should it be placed? Would the memorial include an inscription, and if so what would it say? When the students are done, ask them to share their plans with their classmates and compare the various possibilities.

On January 27, 1973, two years before Danh Vo’s birth, delegations from the United States, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (the Viet Cong), North Vietnam, and South Vietnam sat around a table in the ballroom of the Hôtel Majestic in Paris under magnificent chandeliers and signed the Paris Peace Accords. The agreement was essentially a sham and provided no realistic hope of achieving peace, but it allowed the United States to save face and extricate itself from the conflict. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Saigon eventually fell to North Vietnamese forces. Due to the implementation of repressive policies, which included reeducation camps, huge numbers of South Vietnamese sought to leave the country by any means possible. Vo and his family, like many others, would be indirectly affected by the 1973 agreement made underneath the watch of these chandeliers.

Vo’s discovery of the sale and renovation of the Hôtel Majestic in 2009 led him to write a letter

to the building’s new owners, describing how he had long been fascinated by a photograph of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in the hotel’s ballroom. Vo considered the chandeliers as witnesses to a momentous occasion, one that played a role in shaping his life. After the 1975 fall of South Vietnam, Vo’s family moved from Bà Rịa in southeast Vietnam, where Vo was born, to the western island of Phú Quốc, and then resettled in Ho Chi Minh City. In 1979 they fled the country by boat, and were eventually rescued by a Danish freighter. Vo’s account emphasizes how every biography is as much determined by historical events as by chance encounters. These chandeliers might have been lost to history, but now, removed from their original site, they allude to both Vo’s personal story and the long history of Western intervention in the country of his birth. But these are not the only resonances present in the objects. Vo is also interested in their function as decorative objects that dazzle and delight. He has stated, “These links to my personal life are important to me, but art has to transcend this level.”  9

< 16:32, 26.05 > < 08:43, 26.05 > < 08:03, 28.05 >

16:32, 26.05, 2009. Late 19th-century chandelier, dimensions variable. Gift of Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner to the Centre Pompidou Foundation. Deposited at Musée national d’art moderne, 2016. Centre Pompidou, Paris / Musée national d’art moderne © Danh Vo. photo: Abigail Enzaldo and Emilio Bernabé García courtesy the artist and Museo Jumex, Mexico City; 08:43, 26.05, 2009. Late 19th-century chandelier, dimensions variable. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art and the Fund for the Twenty-First Century, 2010 © Danh Vo. photo: Nick Ash, courtesy the artist; 08:03, 28.05, 2009. Late 19th-century chandelier, dimensions variable. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen © Danh Vo. photo: Serge Hasenböhler © the artist and Kunsthalle Basel, 2009

I do think that we collect things that we desire, because what we desire tells us something about who we are. I guess that’s why I like to shift and change my arrangements from one exhibition to another. These things should never be fixed or totally resolved. Desire is a complicated thing. 8

EXPLORATIONSShow: 16:32, 26.05, 2009 08:43, 26.05, 2009 08:03, 28.05, 2009

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Ask your students to describe what they are looking at and any associations that they have with these objects. What adjectives do they use to describe them? Where might they expect to find them?

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Read the short related essay to your students and show them the photograph documenting the signing of the Paris Peace Accords of 1973 in the ballroom of the Hôtel Majestic. How does knowledge of the history of these objects change their response?

Danh Vo has installed these chandeliers in various ways for different exhibitions, often dismantling them entirely. He says, “I like to try different methods of installing a work each time it is shown, if it’s possible, and if it makes sense. I really liked the way the chandelier looked . . . spread out on the floor and lit up.” 10 How do the different installations change the impact of the work? What other ways might these objects be installed in a space?

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Take a close look at the photograph of the ballroom at the Hôtel Majestic. Describe the environment. What “clues” inform us that something important is going on?

FURTHER EXPLORATIONS

• These chandeliers are connected to the fate of the Vo family. The signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords precipitated the fall of Saigon, which in turn played a role in the decision of Vo’s family to flee Vietnam for the West. What world events have personally affected the family histories of your students? Ask them to research these events, explain how the events impacted their families, and present their findings to their classmates.

• The Vietnam War became increasingly unpopular in the United States in the mid-1960s. The Paris Peace Accords provided a way to extricate the United States from the conflict in Vietnam, but the agreement was highly consequential for South Vietnam. By 1975 North Vietnam had conquered South Vietnam, and communist initiatives had also been victorious in Cambodia and Laos. In a radio and television address, South Vietnamese President Nguyên Van Thiệu (1923–2001) resigned, accusing the United States of betrayal. “At the time of the peace agreement the United States agreed to replace equipment on a one-by-one basis,” he said, “but the United States did not keep its word. Is an American’s word reliable these days?” Thiệu continued: “The United States did not keep its promise to help us fight for freedom and it was in the same fight that the United States lost 50,000 of its young men.” 11 Divide your class into three groups and ask them to research the last years of the Vietnam War from the perspective of the United States, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam, respectively. Many resources are available online, some of which are listed at the end of this resource unit. Ask the students to discuss and debate these perspectives in class.

• Unlike many artists who “make” work with their hands, the materials chosen for Vo’s works are frequently discovered, retrieved, or salvaged. What do the students think about this method of creating works of art?

VIEW + DISCUSS

The first signing ceremony of the Paris Peace Accords in the grand ballroom of the Hôtel Majestic, Paris, January 27, 1973. photo: © 2018 The Associated Press

During a residency in Paris in 2009, Danh Vo discovered a farewell letter written in 1861 by French missionary and martyr Jean-Théophane Vénard (1829–1861). The letter is addressed to Vénard’s father as he calmly awaits his execution for refusing to stop proselytizing—one of many killings of Catholic missionaries that preceded the French colonization of Vietnam in the mid-nineteenth century.

Vo asked his own father, Phung Vo, who is a skilled calligrapher, to transcribe this last communication. To make this ongoing work on paper, Phung rewrites the French letter

in his own hand and mails a copy to each of the work’s collectors. At his son’s request, Phung, who speaks neither French nor English, will faithfully continue to reproduce the letter in his beautiful handwriting until his death. Hundreds of these works have been distributed to individuals and institutions around the world. 13 “Created through a simple gesture of transcription, the reproduction of the letter evokes the colonial history of Vietnam and, on a more personal level, bears witness to two father-son relationships, separated by 150 years.” 14

Vo characteristically locates broader histories in the details of individual characters and their stories. Here he selects Vénard’s beautifully written letter as a point of entry to consider the history of foreign influence in Vietnam. French missionaries are considered by some historians as laying the groundwork for the subsequent colonial occupation by France of Indochina. Importantly, however, Vo’s work foregrounds the admirable courage, humanity, and faith of the missionaries, at the same time that it probes their larger role in a complex sociopolitical situation.

< 2.2.1861 >

Over the past thirty years, I became familiar with my father’s handwriting from all the signs and menus that he handwrote for the various small food stalls he owned in Denmark. Writing calligraphy can become no different from making a burger; calligraphy can become an act of pure labor. 12

2.2.1861, 2009– . Ink on paper, writing by Phung Vo, 11 5/8 x 8 1/8 inches (29.6 x 21 cm), open edition © Danh Vo. photo: Nick Ash, courtesy the artist

EXPLORATIONSShow: 2.2.1861, 2009– Please note that this work contains references to violence and will be more appropriate for older students.

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Ask your students to look carefully at this work. What do they notice?

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Graphology is the study of handwriting, especially for the purpose of character analysis. 15 Look carefully at this work. What personality traits does the handwriting suggest about the person who wrote it?

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Request that your students read the related introductory essay as well as the translation of the letter. How does this information alter their responses to this work?

My dearest, much honored and much loved Father, As my sentence is still delayed, I will send you one more word of farewell, which will probably be the last. These last days in my prison pass quietly; all who surround me are civil and respectful and a good many love me. From the great mandarin down to the humblest private soldier, every one regrets that the laws of the country condemn me to death. I have not been put to the torture like my brethren. A slight sabre-cut will separate my head from my body, like the spring flower which the Master of the Garden gathers for His pleasure. We are all flowers planted on this earth, which God plucks in His own good time, some a little sooner, some a little later. One is as the blushing rose, another the virginal lily, a third the humble violet. Let us each strive to please Our Sovereign Lord and Master according to the gift and the sweetness which He has bestowed upon us. I wish you, my dearest father, a long, happy, and peaceful old age, and that you may bear the cross of life with Jesus unto the Calvary of a happy death. Father and son, may we meet in paradise. I, poor little moth, go first. Adieu! Your devoted and dutiful son, Theophane Vénard, Missionary Apostolic 16

VIEW + DISCUSSFURTHER EXPLORATIONS

• One of the most important aspects of 2.2.1861 is the relationship between Danh Vo and his father, Phung Vo, who creates this ongoing work on paper. A few times a week for nearly a decade, Phung has transcribed this letter, carefully rendering it in blue fountain pen on a single sheet of white paper. Since he does not know the French language, Vo has referred to his father’s act as one of “pure labor” more akin to a visual composition than linguistic communication. A handwritten letter conveys a lot about the author that a computer-generated letter cannot. Ask your students to find a handwritten letter written by a person that they are interested in researching. They may want to look at the extensive online collection of the Morgan Library: themorgan.org/collection/literary-and-historical-manuscripts/list. Then ask them to copy the letter as carefully as they can. What did that feel like? What did they learn?

• For hundreds of years before the invention of e-mail, people communicated through handwritten letters. Many letters written by famous people have been archived on the Internet, but it is no doubt a dying . . . or dead art. Ask your students to write a letter by hand to someone they care about, and send it off in an envelope with a stamp. The recipient will likely be both surprised and pleased, since the practice of letter writing is now such a rarity. Consider how it felt to handwrite a letter. How is it different from sending an e-mail?

• In addition to historical correspondence, Vo frequently uses official documents in his work, including diplomas, divorce certificates, marriage licenses, passports, and wills. Although these documents may seem puzzling to the viewer, many of these works relate directly or circuitously to Vo’s personal history and biography. Ask your students to create a list of official documents that are connected to their lives. How do these documents function in the world and impact the people whose names appear on them?

I suppose I tried to avoid nostalgia by not being sentimental with the objects . . . . It didn’t give the objects new names or identities; they were simply transported into an art context. 17

< LOT 20. TWO KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION CABINET ROOM CHAIRS >

Viewing Danh Vo’s work is an experience marked by a gradual uncovering of meanings. Unlike other artworks that you may be used to seeing in galleries and museums, Vo’s work is largely made from found and appropriated items imbued with political or personal importance. In some works, Vo calls attention to the commonplace objects present during significant historical moments and transforms those used by notable figures. In doing so, he highlights the items’ roles as witnesses. Many of these everyday relics are not immediately identifiable as important or memorable, yet Vo grapples with the unreliable and fading nature of our collective memory by “revaluing the historical sense of a common object.” 18

In Lot 20. Two Kennedy Administration Cabinet Room Chairs (2013), Vo disassembles two chairs that once furnished the cabinet room of president John F. Kennedy (1917–1963). The artist purchased the chairs in a Sotheby’s auction of items that once belonged to the late Robert McNamara (1916–2009)—the former defense secretary for presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973). McNamara oversaw the escalation of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and used these chairs when they occupied president Kennedy’s cabinet room. Later, they were gifted to McNamara by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) after President Kennedy’s death. Approaching the work, the torn leather or wood frame could be

mistaken for an abstract sculpture; the artwork’s material and its latent historical significance is not immediately identifiable. Parts of the chairs, such as the muslin lining, leather upholstery, or cotton stuffing, are refashioned into individual pieces and displayed as signifiers of a distant yet influential past.

In ripping apart these chairs, Vo creates what curator Patrick Charpenel calls “archaeological fragments” 19 of a complicated history. Yet, as with all of Vo’s work, extended looking, examination, and discovery reveal convergent layers of historical and personal significance.

Lot 20. Two Kennedy Administration Cabinet Room Chairs, 2013. Leather, 102 x 29 x 17 inches (259.1 x 73.7 x 43.2 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director’s Council 2013.13 © Danh Vo. photo: © Marian Goodman Gallery

EXPLORATIONSShow: Lot 20. Two Kennedy Administration Cabinet Room Chairs, 2013

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What do your students notice with this work? What are they looking at?

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The chairs were owned by a man named Robert McNamara, who worked with former presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to make important decisions about our country in the 1960s. How does this knowledge affect how they see the work?

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“These sorts of items never end up in public auction,” Danh Vo has stated. “It was purely by chance that I was able to get my hands on these objects because they are normally donated directly to Presidential libraries.” 20 How might these objects be displayed differently in another setting? What might they look like in a history museum or a house?

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Vo thinks a lot about objects that may look commonplace at first, but have their own pasts and hidden meanings. Ask your students to think of objects that they own, which might have other unknown purposes or messages. How might an alteration to form or shape change an object’s meaning?

FURTHER EXPLORATIONS

• Vo considers how objects are silent witnesses to important and complicated moments in our past. Sometimes, these objects may not seem significant until their history becomes apparent, along with knowledge of the people that owned and used them. While thinking about an important event in their life, ask your students what object was a silent witness. Would people be able to tell the object was important just by looking at it? Why or why not? If the object could talk, what kinds of things might the object say? Ask your students to write a diary entry from the perspective of the object, thinking about how the object might tell the story of an important life event. How might the object’s perspective on the event be different or similar to your own?

• In Lot 20. Two Kennedy Administration Cabinet Room Chairs, a historical object is used as unexpected art material. Vo completely transforms two leather chairs by disassembling them and using the pieces of leather upholstery to create a work that is confounding and sculptural. Ask your students to think about how they might completely transform an object that they use, and bring in an object that is about to be discarded. (Some examples may be old toys or outgrown clothing.) While the objects should have a history, they should also not be valuable. Inform the students that they will be manipulating or taking apart the objects to make a new artwork. Before transforming each of their objects, ask the students to sketch out their ideas. How can they completely transform an everyday object? What tools will they need to disassemble and reassemble these objects? What would be an ideal way to display this work? After drawing out their initial plan, begin experimenting with their planned transformations or move on to discussion. Why have they chosen this particular way of altering the object? How might that alteration change its meaning, and how do they see their objects differently now? Do they have new ideas about Vo’s work now that they have considered transforming an object like the artist?

VIEW + DISCUSS

Let her travel, let her be spread around. Let it just be this fluid mass that travels and becomes something very different [from the original]. 21

< WE THE PEOPLE (DETAIL) >

In the work of Danh Vo, art becomes a site of transformation and a locus for viewers to reconsider their existing beliefs and ideas. By changing the context and manipulating familiar objects, Vo challenges viewers’ preexisting notions about how meaning is shared and from where it is derived. While familiar, personal, and everyday objects often spur these reflections, Vo’s We the People (detail) (2011–16) deals explicitly with the widely known. Here, Vo examines what it means for individuals to view a singular and widely recognizable icon in a new way.

In 2010 Vo hired a fabricator in Shanghai to produce a one-to-one replica of the Statue of Liberty. The statue, originally designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (1834–1904), was a gift from France to the United States in 1876 celebrating the centennial anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The statue is seen as both a beacon of freedom and a monument to ideas of American opportunity and possibility.

Vo’s We the People (detail) is an exact copy of the famous statue that has been separated into over three hundred distinct fragments, which are presented in various locations. This reconfigured display provides an opportunity to observe sections of the statue up close and from unorthodox angles. Some portions are recognizable—a gigantic ear or slices of hands and feet—while other abstracted pieces look more like geometric sculptures.

Although Vo did not visit the Statue of Liberty in person before creating We the People (detail), 22 he was fascinated by the way the monument was made in the 1880s. To fashion each piece, Vo used the same nineteenth-century technique of repoussé. 23 This method molds a thin layer of copper around a standing armature to create a completely hollow statue. After researching the sculpture and discovering its copper skin is only 2.4 mm thick, Vo was surprised by the unexpected fragility of the famous monument. In some of Vo’s fragments, the inner skeleton is visible and the statue’s vulnerable structure is laid bare. These distributable and carefully reproduced pieces could be read as a celebration of the icon or as a critique. Rather than set out to endow Lady Liberty with a specific new meaning, Vo wishes to give viewers an opportunity to reexamine the statue and the ideals it represents from their own perspective. Of this work Vo has said, “We the People is not about going to the past. Since it’s one of the most important icons for Western liberty I think [it] is very much about the present and our future.” 24

We the People (detail), 2011–16. Copper, 390 kg. Jumex Collection, Mexico. © Danh Vo. photo: Kunstbetrieb and the artist

EXPLORATIONSShow: We the People (detail), 2011–16

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What do your students notice about this work? What are they looking at? We the People is an exact replica of the Statue of Liberty, divided into over three hundred fragments that are displayed separately. Does this information change the way they see the work?

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Show your students an image of the Statue of Liberty. How is the statue similar to Danh Vo’s replica? How is it different?

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The artist titled this work, We the People, in reference to the first three words of the Declaration of Independence. 25 Why do you think he chose those words? Can you think of any other titles for this work?

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Unlike the Statue of Liberty, fragments of Vo’s statue can be in different places at the same time. If you could put a single piece of We the People anywhere, where would you put it, and why?

FURTHER EXPLORATIONS

• The Statue of Liberty is a monument that has inspired artists, poets, and writers in different ways. At the time of the statue’s construction, Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) wrote “The New Colossus” (1883), a poem that was engraved in 1903 upon a plaque mounted to the statue’s base. An excerpt of Lazarus’s poem reads:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Some of the statue’s symbolism can be tied to this poem. While Vo’s work is a replica of the icon that inspired Lazarus, the artist confronts our preconceived ideas about the Statue of Liberty by fragmenting the monument. To explore the ways in which Vo challenges these conceptions, ask your students to write their own poems in response to his multipart statue after reading Lazarus’s sonnet. How are these new poems different from or similar to the sentiments that Lazarus expresses?

• While Vo transforms the Statue of Liberty in We the People, he displays each individual piece so that the monument’s thin copper construction is visible. “I thought it would be [a] great challenge to take an image that everyone has some idea about and twist it. Do something to it.” 26 Have your students sketch a famous object or monument they would want to “twist” or transform. How do these changes impact the meaning?

• In researching for We the People, Vo was fascinated by the way the monument was created using thin layers of embossed metal molded around an armature, a technique known as repoussé. 27 Experiment with this technique. Your class will need aluminum foil, cardboard, glue, and yarn. Give each student a cardboard base and have them draw a design. Next, ask the students to outline their drawing with glue, pasting pieces of yarn onto their drawings to create a raised design. After the drawings dry, place aluminum foil onto their raised designs and press down, creating embossed imprints of the designs. The students may also experiment with wooden styli or pencils to create additional texture. Discuss what surprised them about this process. Now that they have experimented with this technique, how might they think about the Statue of Liberty differently?

VIEW + DISCUSS

RESO

URC

ES ARTICLES AND BOOKSBrinson, Katherine. Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away. Exh. cat. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2018.

Chaillou, Timothée. “Interview with Danh Vo.” Flash Art, September 23, 2013. https://www.flashartonline.com/2013/09/danh-vo-24-09-2013-interview/.

FILMS AND VIDEOSBurns, Ken, and Lynn Novick, dir. The Vietnam War. Walpole, N.H.: Florentine Films; Washington, D.C.: WETA, 2017. http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/home/.

“Danh Vo about the exhibition ‘Hip hip hurra.’” National Gallery of Denmark, May 6, 2013. YouTube video, 15:04. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOqXK2BHU-Q.

“Danh Vo—We the People.” National Gallery of Denmark, May 27, 2013. YouTube video, 4:19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8glrGJxpo9A.

Morris, Errol, dir. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. Los Angeles: Sony Pictures Classics, 2003. https://vimeo.com/149799416.

WEBSITESAvengers in Time. “1973, News: Paris Peace Accords signed.” Updated April 10, 2014. http://avengers-in-time.blogspot. com/2014/04/1973-news-paris-peace-accords-signed.html.

National Archives. “The War in Viet Nam: A Story in Photographs.” https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/vietnam-photos.

PBS Learning Media. “Teaching the Vietnam War.” https://nj. pbslearningmedia.org/collection/teaching-the-vietnam-war/#. Wf5TIWhSwdU.

Teaching Channel. “The Vietnam War—How Is It Taught in Vietnam?” https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-vietnam-war.

TeachingHistory.org. https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/vietnam-photos

NOTES

1 Sofiá Hernández Chong Cuy, “Pratchaya Phinthong + Danh Vo,” Modern Painters 20, no. 10 (Dec. 2008–Jan. 2009), pp. 56–57.

2 Danh Vo, “Make History: Danh Vo in Conversation with Nora Taylor,” Garage, no. 8 (Spring–Summer 2015), p. 82.

3 Danh Vo, “Danh Vo Interview: A Question of Freedom,” Louisiana Channel, January 22, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ELmm-jNkLs.

4 Danh Vo, quoted in Robecchi Michele, “Living History,” Art in America, October 1, 2012, https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazines/living-history/.

5 See the National Gallery of Denmark’s artwork entry for Oma Totem, accessed December 28, 2017, http://www.smk.dk/en/visit-the-museum/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2011/danh-vo/work-oma-totem/.

6 See the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Collection Online entry for Das Beste oder Nichts, accessed December 28, 2017, https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/28790.

7 See Bartholomew Ryan, “Tombstone for Phùng Vo,” Sightlines (blog), Walker Art Center, January 4, 2012, https://walkerart.org/magazine/tombstone-for-phung-vo; and Ana Teixeira Pinto, “Danh Vo’s All your deeds shall in water be writ, but this in marble at Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin,” Art Agenda, October 27, 2010, http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/danh-vos-all-your-deeds-shall-in-water-be-writ-but-this-in-marble-at-isabella-bortolozzi-galerie-berlin/.

8 Danh Vo, “Interview with Danh Vo,” interview by Timothée Chaillou, Flash Art, September 23, 2013, https://www.flashartonline.com/2013/ 09/danh-vo-24-09-2013-interview/.

9 Danh Vo, quoted in “Danh Vo: In Memory of Forgetting,” Deutsche Bank, accessed December 28, 2017, http://db-artmag.com/en/57/feature/danh-vo-in-memory-of-forgetting/.

10 Vo, “Interview with Danh Vo."11 “1975: Vietnam’s President Thieu Resigns,” BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/

onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/21/newsid_2935000/2935347.stm.12 Danh Vo, Danh Vo: Mothertongue (Venice: Venice Biennale;

Copenhagen: Danish Arts Foundation, 2015), p. 12.

13 Hilarie M. Sheets, “Lady Liberty, Inspiring Even in Pieces,” New York Times, September 20, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/arts/design/danh-vos-we-the-people-project-in-chicago.html.

14 Maura Lynch, “The Personal and Political in the Art of Danh Vo,” Inside/Out, May 12, 2011, https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2011/05/12/the-personal-and-political-in-the-art-of-danh-vo/.

15 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “graphology (n.),” accessed December 28, 2017, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/graphology.

16 Théophane Vénard, A Modern Martyr: Théophane Vénard (Blessed), edited by James Anthony Walsh (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Catholic Foreign Mission Society, 1913), pp. 190–91. Quoted in Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away, edited by Katherine Brinson (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2018), pp. 30–31.

17 Vo, “Interview with Danh Vo.”18 Patrick Charpenel, “Foreword: Readymades with History,” in Danh

Vo [Wād al-ḥaŷara], edited by Charpenel et al. (Mexico City: Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, 2016), p. 4.

19 Ibid.20 Vo, “Interview with Danh Vo.”21 Danh Vo, quoted in Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, edited by Fabrice

Hergott and Angeline Scherf, exh. cat. (Paris: Éditions Dialecta; Paris: Musée d’Art modern de la Ville de Paris, 2014), p. 6.

22 “Danh Vo—We the People,” National Gallery of Denmark, May 27, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8glrGJxpo9A.

23 Angeline Scherf, Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, p. 10. 24 Vo, “A Question of Freedom.”25 “Danh Vo—We the People.”26 Ibid.27 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “repoussé (adj.),” accessed December 28,

2017, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/repousse.