Anh Dao Ha
Anh Dao is an American born artist, curator, and cultural worker living and working between New York City and Saigon. Her practice includes research, writing, curation, and design. Her work explores the aesthetics of everyday objects, materials, and pop culture, examining how they shape collective memory and interact with human infrastructures.
She is currently Assistant Curator at Galerie Quynh in Saigon. Holding a BFA from Parsons School of Design and a BA from The New School, she will be pursuing her MA in Curatorial Studies at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Work Description
You Said Love Should Be Damnation (Curtain), 2025
Found curtains with valances, found floor lamps
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist
You Said Love Should Be Damnation (Soil), 2025
Acrylic on cotton, soil
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist
You Said Love Should Be Damnation (Curtain) stages grief as spectacle through the formal language of mourning. Curtains and floor lamps of the type used in funeral halls create a framed, empty space. Where traditionally a coffin might rest, the void invites viewers to contemplate absence itself.
The work creates a literal funeral for the romantic relationship, with curtains and lamps framing the idea of loss. By making suffering visible through the conventions of public mourning, the installation exposes the performative nature of grief itself.
You Said Love Should Be Damnation (Soil) centers on the text “You said love should be damnation. You pointed it at my heart”—a rearranged, slightly misremembered version of text from Anne Carson’s poem “What I Like About You, Baby,” which depicts the deterioration of a relationship and how memory fragments its recollection. The artist’s misremembrance of the poem itself reinforces this fragmentation.
The hand-painted text on a white banner evokes Vietnamese funeral banners and propaganda banners—matter-of-fact declarations with no design flourish. Resting on soil, the banner transforms from memorial into proclamation, asserting the reality of loss with stark directness. The work questions how we construct meaning when love collapses into memory’s distortions, yet declares that collapse with unwavering certainty.