Danh Vo’s practice elucidates latent meaning embedded in objects and texts as well as the malleable nature of identity, melding private narratives with global political histories. For Das Beste oder Nichts (2010), Vo appropriated the Mercedes-Benz engine from a car owned by his father Phung Vo, a Vietnamese refugee who had fled the country by boat with his family, became lost at sea, and immigrated to Denmark after being picked up by a Danish commercial ship. Borrowing the work’s title from the car company’s logo, the artist wryly comments on what constituted success for his family once assimilated in Europe. For 2.2.1861 (2009), the artist asked his father, who is a skilled calligrapher, to transcribe the last communication from the French Catholic Saint Théophane Vénard to his own father before his execution for proselytizing in Vietnam. Repeatedly writing the work by hand, Phung Vo mails a copy of the letter to each of the work’s collectors, in a gesture that narrates a wider history of displacement and the vagaries of communicating across cultures. Lot 20. Two Kennedy Administration Cabinet Room Chairs investigates a dark chapter in American history as it intersects with the artist’s biography. The cascading leather fragments affixed to the wall were torn from the upholstery of chairs that once furnished John F. Kennedy’s cabinet room, which Vo acquired from a Sotheby’s auction of possessions belonging to the late Robert McNamara, former defense secretary for both Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and a driving force behind American involvement in the Vietnam War.