In 2010, Vietnamese-born Danish artist Danh Vo was offered a one-man show at the Fridericianum, a huge exhibition space in Kassel, Germany.
For the show, Vo re-created a full-size copper replica of the Statue of Liberty – the whole hundred-and-fifty-foot monolith – cast in many separate sections which remained separate and unassembled. He titled the work We the People. After the exhibition, more than 300 sculptural forms – including abstract shapes and massive, recognisable portions of Lady Liberty’s body – were dispersed across the world to museums and public institutions. Various snippets of the work, such as toes and fingers, are now on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York: the site of Vo’s first comprehensive survey in the United States. Organised by Katherine Brinson, Daskalopoulos Curator, Contemporary Art, the show is titled Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away – after the award-winning song from the 1986 film Top Gun that glorified America’s military.
This story is from the Aprill - May 2018 edition of Arts Illustrated.
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This story is from the Aprill - May 2018 edition of Arts Illustrated.
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