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M+, Hong Kong, © Danh Vo
Danh Vo 傅丹
January 2015 2015年1月
2015
This painting is based on an original that depicts the martyrdom by torture and dismemberment of French Christian missionary Jean-Charles Cornay (1809–1837) in Tonkin—present-day Vietnam. Cornay’s martyrdom inspired his compatriot Jean-Théophane Vénard (35) to embark on his own evangelising mission. Cornay’s remains are preserved and venerated in the church in Chiêu Ứng in northern Vietnam, and several relics—including his hair, the rope used to bind him, and the carpet on which he was executed, as well as the painting depicting the gruesome execution—are in the collection of the Missions étrangères de Paris. The original work was painted on silk by an unknown Vietnamese artist but is now lost, and the painting in Paris is an oil-on-canvas copy. In a conceptual attempt to return the copy to an approximation of the original, Vo commissioned four Chinese painters to make their own copies on silk based on the existing copy. This act of copying alludes to the longestablished practice in Chinese painting—and, more broadly, in Asian painting—of copying classical examples. This particular work was painted by Li Peng.
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