[News] First Solo Exhibition at a Japanese Museum! Danh Vo "Danh Vo — oV hnaD" at The National Museum of Art, Osaka

Danh Vo “Danh Vo — oV hnaD”

“Danh Vo — oV hnaD,” the first solo exhibition at a Japanese museum by internationally renowned artist Danh Vo (represented by Take Ninagawa), will be held at The National Museum of Art, Osaka.

Danh Vo was born in 1975 in Ba Ria, Vietnam, and is now based in Mexico City, working across the world. At the age of four, Vo fled Vietnam with his family aboard a boat his father had built. Rescued at sea by a Danish ship and going through a refugee camp, he settled in Denmark. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and the Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany.

Danh Vo makes his works by incorporating ready-mades, photographs, letters, and other collected items marked by his own experience, family history, and social or political history, as well as objects made by hand by important people around him. Through those works, themes such as identity, power, history, hegemony, and eroticism appear directly or metaphorically, inviting the viewer to look at a single thing from different angles.

This exhibition is a long-awaited first solo exhibition at a Japanese museum, revealing the full scope of Danh Vo — one of the most closely watched artists in the world — and is held exclusively at The National Museum of Art, Osaka.

Some 40 works, both new and recent, will be shown, including works by important people around Vo — his teacher, father, lover, and his nephew who is Vo’s muse — as well as pieces created in collaboration with the descendants of R. McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense who drove the Vietnam War forward.

Visitors can fully savor Danh Vo’s exceptional eye for selection and his skill for combination. The arrangement of works throughout the exhibition space — meticulously considered by Vo himself — is also a highlight.