Image size: 165.0 x 111.0 cm
Danh Vo’s work is a reproduction of a 19th century historical Vietnamese painting, part of a small group of rare works held in the Société des Missions étrangères (Society of Foreign Missionaries) in Paris. Painted by Vietnamese artisans, these highly-unusual works are rare surviving examples of 19th century Vietnamese painting, and represent the martyrdom of Christians in 19th century Vietnam. As such, they represent an important historical event (an early site of tension in French-Vietnamese relations, and a pretext for early French intervention in Indochina) and an art-historical event (rare group of surviving 19th century Vietnamese paintings). On visiting the Society, the artist noted that all the original paintings but this one were on silk, rather than in oil paint. Further research indicated that the original painting on which this work is based was damaged on route to Paris, so was later copied into oils by a French painter. To intervene into this cultural traffic of the image, Danh Vo commissioned six Chinese painters working in ink and colour on silk to create reproductions of the work, altering the image to further "Asianise" it. Stylistically, the work shows the compositional and figurative elements common to Vietnamese folk printing and painting in the 19th century, but these have been altered through the iterative process of copying and recopying.
