Danh Vo was born in 1975 in Ba Ria, Vietnam. From 1998-2002, he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and then at the Staatlichen Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Frankfurt (Städelschule).

According to the critic Daniel Völzke, Vo’s background and escape by boat from Vietnam form a kind of “prehistory” in his work. For his first museum exhibition in 2007 at the BKV Potsdam, he wove a dense network of references from his personal history from reconstructed facts about Vietnam for tourists, folkloric artifacts of a colonial colored military history, subtly playing with the spectator’s expectations of an exotic artist.

He was nominated for the two most highly endowed prizes for emerging contemporary art in Germany: the Blauorange-Preis, which he won in 2007, and he competed for the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst in 2009. Blue Orange Prize. In 2012, he was honored with the Hugo Boss Prize.

Vo currently lives in Mexico City.