Danh Vo

2.2.1861

2009

Last Letter of Saint Theophane Venard to His Father Before He was Decapitated Copied by Phung Vo.

Each time the work is acquired, the artist commissions his father Phùng Vo to copy by hand a letter from 19th-century French missionary Théophane Vénard, which was written a few days before he was beheaded for heresy in Vietnam on February 2, 1861. Addressed to the missionary’s father as a farewell gesture, the letter’s humble and affecting tone is one strand in a work that also signals the colonial expansion to which Vénard can be seen to have been at the vanguard. After carefully re-creating the letter, which is in French, a language that he does not speak, Phùng Vo sends it via standard mail to the collector who has acquired the work and records the address for his own personal archive. This ongoing series will come to an end upon the dead of Phùng Vo.

Title and edition number remains undefined untill the death of Phung Vo.

Medium

Ink on Paper

Dimensions

29.6 x 21cm