Unflattening stereotypes through pop-up art
- Colette transforms photographs into 3D scenes
- Her work addresses the broader politics of cultural visibility and stereotyping
- She teaches pop-up book structure workshops
Colette Fu merges photography, paper engineering and cultural research into large-scale pop-up tableaux. Using photographs from her travels across China, she composes visual stories before building them into intricate paper mechanisms, printing, cutting, folding and gluing structures in a process she has taught herself. “I bought pop-up books on eBay, took them apart and started experimenting,” Colette says. The pop-up format carries the arresting visual language of children’s books, yet in her hands it becomes a way to unflatten cultural narratives. Depictions of China’s diverse cultures unfold in 3D, literally and figuratively, as Colette’s vivid scenes of everyday life bring nuance into relief. “My intent is to captivate the viewer first and then open the way to recognition,” she says.
INTERVIEW
I always liked mathematics as a child. The spatial reasoning behind making pop-ups feels rooted in it, but it is also deeply intuitive. There are so many different ways something could pop up. I cannot always explain why I choose one over another.
My mother was born there. After college I travelled through China and ended up teaching English at a university my great-grandfather had helped found. I lived in the province for three years. In 2008, on a Fulbright fellowship, I began creating a photographic pop-up book about its ethnic minorities, and I am still working on it today.
It relates to my time studying photography. I was composing in 2D then, but the way I think about composition is very similar. If I had to name influences from that period, they would be the Dadaists and Surrealists.
I like the idea of showing people something that will captivate, disorient or unsettle, and inform all at once in an unexpected way.
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