In an effort to find a new form of simplicity, Danh Vō decided to dedicate his energy to the beauty of flowers, growing a new garden around his studio at Güldenhof, an old farm in Brandenburg outside Berlin. He wanted to feel closer to these flowers and hechallenged himself to get to know their names and be able to recognize them. The flowers were photographed on the farm; the C-prints are glued on paper and labelledin pencil with their Latin name by his father. The works have an encyclopedic aura, like pages plucked from a large book and framed. This presentation along with the Latin names shows how we index and formulate nature according to our own values. In the names there is a history of global exchange, colonialism, and power, but also of aesthetics, utility, and cross fertilization.​

Danh Vō’s conceptual artworks and installations often draw upon elements of autobiography and collective experience to explore broader historical, social or political themes relating to migration, identification and authorial status. Born in 1975, the year that marked the end of the American Vietnam War, Vō’s family becamevictims of the Cambodian-Vietnamese War that broke out immediately afterwards. They fled the country by boat when Vō was four years old; he has no memories of hisearly childhood in Vietnam. The vessel was rescued at sea by a Danish freighter, the nationality of which determined the fate of the refugees—the ramifications of thisfortuitous encounter are reflected in the role thatchance and coincidence continue to play in Vō’s practice. His work frequently incorporates documents, photographs, foundobjects (with emotional or historical significance), lettering or appropriations of worksby other artists or designers, which have accrued meaning over time, through transferof ownership or shifting social or cultural contexts. He is particularly interested in the discrepancies between myth and reality, between the past and the present, and between the malleable identities and histories imposed on him by others as well as those that he creates for himself.