Tour of “What the Butterfly Dragon Taught Me” (Online Event)
In this program, CBA 2021 Faculty Fellow Colette Fu gives a virtual tour of her exhibition, What the Butterfly Dragon Taught Me, Dimensional Stories in Paper.
The exhibition beautifully showcases Fu’s mastery of complex three-dimensional compositions engineered from paper and her own photographs – a practice she has honed over almost two decades.
For the tour, Fu will discuss the individual stories of each work as well speaking to the overall series they are part of – We Are Tiger Dragon People.
About the Artist
Philadelphia-based artist Colette Fu makes complex three-dimensional compositions that incorporate photography and pop-up paper engineering.
Her pop-up books are included in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, and many private and rare archive collections.
Colette’s numerous awards include a 2020 Joan Mitchell Artist and Sculptor’s Grant, the Meggendorfer Prize for best paper-engineered artist book, and a Fulbright Research Fellowship to China.
In 2017, Colette created the world’s largest pop-up book utilizing her own photographs – Tao Hua Yuan Ji, Source of the Peach Blossoms, a 21×14 feet pop-up book that people could enter, at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center.
Her solo show Wanderer/Wonderer was presented at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2016/17. Colette teaches pop-up courses and community workshops to marginalized populations at art centers, universities and institutions internationally.
About the Exhibition
CBA 2021 Faculty Fellow Colette Fu‘s new works presented in What the Butterfly Dragon Taught Me: Dimensional Stories in Paper, are a continuation of We Are Tiger Dragon People – her ongoing series of photo-based pop-up books about the ethnicities of China. These new works include stories of the Miao, Dulong, Mongolian, Han, and Yi, created during quarantine.
