Danh Vo Baby Grow

The original painting that is reproduced on these baby onesies depicts the execution of missionaries trained by the Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris, an institution that continues to educate aspiring evangelicals and enlist them in missions abroad. Most French missionaries in the 19th century were sent to Asia, two hundred years after the Portuguese set foot in the region. The seminary ordered these paintings from converted Vietnamese artisans. The French missionary killings may have served as an excuse for France to colonize Vietnam in the mid 19th century. But the French also supported the English in The Second Opium War against China, for which they needed Vietnam's northern port. Fifty years later the killings of Christians during the Boxer Rebellion would be used in a similarly political manner. 

2018
Baby Grow
Published by Marian Goodman Gallery