Short discussion on the art of Danh Vo

When I first look at Danh Vo’s interview, I was confused by its topic: Art Should Estrange. This is the first time I heard somebody define art in such way. When you first see his artworks and received the information that he was a Vietnam War Refugees, you will soon connect them together, stating that these were his personal work. Yet he refused to admit. He described his work as a “consequence” of those social issue.

One of a good example will be his iconic work Oma Totem(2009). It is a sculpture created with objects provided by his refugees grandmother when she first arrived to Germany. When his family were escaping from the war, they have separate into two boats. It led to a end that part of his family members went to Germany. But he treated it in a very objective way — he described it as a record of a gap or a miscommunication created by the war, which was a reasonable and good practice on displaying memories — using own experience to record social phenomena and collective memories. It is way more powerful than just presenting datas, but at the same time keep the attitude to be objective.

Danh Vo - Oma Totem(2009)

However, the way he reconstruct memory is the most impressing part on his practice. If you understand his practice, you will know that his is actually questioning it:

“I was interested in the distance between different social groups,…I wanted to deal with estrangement, when you would come in a white cube where information is amputated. That you would just not understand.”

Without any explanation, you will definitely not understand his work, and this was his intention as he was tearing up communication itself. Though he was doing a kind of documentation ,he was isolating the audience to the real world, refusing any kinds of social norms affecting audiences’ view, bringing things goes to the level of abstraction. “Everyone is Born in systems,”he said, “We were taught to be harmonist, but contradiction exists everywhere.”Thus,  his work is a learning process to embrace and coexist with contradictions. He described that the desire we owned was given by others, by the society. When we set problems to trap ourselves into the problems, that will be the first time we can taste what is to be freedom. He mentioned that the western countries uphold freedom, but they keep having wars. The fact is thought provoking, which makes me understand what he tires to challenge and amazed by how he reconstruct memories and enhanced it into the another level.

“Art is not bridging. Art is estranged.” Though I hate things to be abstract in my own art practice, his practice groundbreaking, thought-provocative, and truly respectable.

Project“COLOR”: Behind the Scenes

This is my first try on a themed project at the Hong Kong Baptist University - School of Creative Arts. Under the title “COLOR - from inner self to outer worlds”, I have created individual and collaborative works: “SHE”, “Transparent- Elapse of Time” and the poster of the project.

First let’s talk about “SHE”. It is a work inspired by Yayoi Kusama’s work Self-obliteration. By the time I am working on this work, I feel lost with my life, especially with the part of interpersonal relationships. When I look at Yayoi Kusama’s work at her Hong Kong exhibition, I am surprised with her work on expressing herself and the way she treat her work as an art therapy. Thus, it becomes my motivation on creating this work.

Self-obliteration, accordion book "SHE" , 2023

Originally, I try to use fire red as the main color of the accordion book and do some researches on that, but soon I find that things I want to express through that color is too wide, chaotic and unclear, which is hard to be understood. When I discuss with my course instructor, he thought that I want to talk about something related to the war, which is not something I want to express through this work. After struggling with it for awhile, I finally choose to change the color theme into blue as it is a color more visible to present the emotion I want to express to the audience. However, things still doesn’t work pretty well at last. Using art to express oneself is hard, especially when art is a two-way process and you have to make audience understand your work in order to build up a “valid communication”. Still, I think it is a good try on discovering inner self through artwork and illustration.

To work describition

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On the other hand, talking about the installation art “Transparent- Elapse of Time”, it is the first time for me to finish a collaborative artwork. Thus, the first challenge is to merging everyone’s ideas as artists are usually rich in ideas but also “opinionated”. It is hard to balance all of the ideas.

Besides of that, the second challenge will be the choice of topic. “Transparent” is a special and unique theme from “color”, but it is also very tricky on the ways to perform while combining to projection devices. This lead to the fact that we have changed our main ideas many times,from stereoscopic projection, projection with moving images, to the final work with only some simple visuals. The choice of topic causes a consequence that we have put too much effort into the trial and error process, and it is something worth to consider in the next time. However, there’re still some good things about this work. Since we keep all the thing in simple and precise in the final work, the interaction of the work is simple and easy to be understood, but at the same time capable to present what we want to “say” though it.

To work describition

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So, the last thing will be the poster. First or all, it is my honor to use my design as the final version of the poster. To be honest, this is my first attempt on design work. Back to the idea-thinking stage, I try not to add too much information onto the visuals, but also maximizing the presentation of the theme “COLOR”.

Therefore, I find a non-copyright image from unsplash ( l’m sorry but I can’t find back the author’s name) that is intuitive, attractive but simple, making two more versions(one is white and one is black) to give more information to the work. Also, I have added some patterns to give visual power to it, which aims to let audience recognize the topic and representing the subtitle that audience are going from outer worlds into inner self.

Thankfully, things look good at last and the color casting after printing out is under prediction.

To work describition

The works I have created or participated are not bad at all, but still there are lots of things require me to carry out reflections and make changes.