Combining personal histories with colonial narratives, Danish-Vietnamese artist Danh Vo examines issues of authorship, authority, and questions of identity and belonging. Born in 1975 in Ba Ria, Vo fled Vietnam at the end of the American Vietnam War. In his solo exhibition untitled at South London Gallery (SLG) in 2019, Vo took over the Main Gallery and Fire Station building of SLG, and presented a site-specific work on Pelican housing estate and Art Block—SLG's art space dedicated to children. Alongside personal references, the exhibition at SLG contained archival elements, bringing the past into the present in his inclusion of marble compositions made up of Antique, Medieval, and 19th-century statues, melded together with brass fittings. Archival materials, artefacts, and objects with specific historical connotations are also present throughout the artist's practice as references to colonial legacies and the history of globalisation. For instance, in Vo's installation composed of numerous carmine candles in varying shades of pink, titled Gardens with Pigeons in Flight (2018), the artist collaborated with artisans in Oaxaca in Mexico to bleach candles and dye them in cochineal—a reference to the pre-Hispanic tradition of cochineal dyes and their key role in European trade. The use of candles was also used a reference to Catholic faith, with cochineal having held prominence in the upper hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Europe. Danh Vo studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark, and the Städelschule, Frankfurt. Vo was the recipient of the Hugo Boss Prize from the Guggenheim Foundation in New York, and the Arken Art Prize in 2015, and has held numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, at institutions including CAPC Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, Guggenheim Museum, and Statens Museum for Kunst in 2018; National Gallery Singapore and Aspen Museum of Art in 2016; and the Danish Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale, Museum Ludwig, and Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2015. His work has been exhibited at the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; the Art Institute, Chicago; the Kunsthalle Bregenz; and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.