COLOGNE.- The core of the first solo exhibition by Danh Võ in a museum in Germany, which was specifically conceived by the artist for the Museum Ludwig, is his most well-known long-term project We The People, a full-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty. While most of the pieces of this sculpture project comprising more than 250 fragments are scattered across various public and private collections around the world, the Museum Ludwig presents the largest contiguous piece to date of this enormous copper body. Furthermore, in the exhibition Danh Võ stages a dialogue between new works of his own and selected works by the American photographer Peter Hujar.

The title of the exhibition initially seems to be written in a non-European language. Danh Võ’s background could lead one to assume that the words are Vietnamese. However, upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that the letters form the sentence “it is warm in the body” written in reverse order. The sentence takes a further twist with the realization that it is a demonic quotation from the legendary horror film The Exorcist.

In his objects, installations, photographs, and works on paper, Danh Võ combines personal experiences from his childhood in Vietnam with his family’s history, their flight to Europe, and questions of colonialism, migration, and cultural identity. Additional important themes of his work are the examination of same-sex relationships and the questioning of behavioral norms in general, both in society as a whole and in the context of art in particular.

Currently Danh Võ is presenting two exhibitions in Venice: he is representing Denmark at the 56th Biennale and also curated the exhibition Slip of the Tongue at the Punta della Dogana. The artist Danh Võ, who was born in 1975 in Vietnam and grew up in Copenhagen, attracted significant international attention with his solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel in 2009. Since then, he has participated in the Berlin, Gwangju, and Singapore biennales as well as exhibitions at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His major solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel, the Art Institute and the Renaissance Society in Chicago, the Kunsthaus Bregenz, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris were also widely acclaimed.

With this solo exhibition by Danh Võ, the Museum Ludwig is programmatically turning its gaze toward Asia and beginning a deeper engagement with artists from regions beyond the hegemonic European and North American discourse.