Colette Fu

Colette Fu received her MFA in Fine Art Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2003, and soon after began devising complex compositions that incorporate photography and pop-up paper engineering. She has designed for award winning stop motion animation commercials and free-lanced for clients including Greenpeace, Vogue China, Canon Asia and Moët Hennessy • Louis Vuitton and the Delaware Disaster Research Center. Her pop-up books are included in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the West Collection and many private and rare archive collections. In 2014, Fu attended a 6-month artist residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai, where she continued her “We are Tiger Dragon” project, an extensive visual exploration of China’s ethnic minorities. There she also designed China’s largest (1 spread) pop-up book measuring 2.5 x 5 x 1.7 meters high. In October 2017, Colette created the world's largest – Tao Hua Yuan Ji, a 13.8 x 21 feet pop up book that people could enter, at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. 

Fu's numerous awards include the 2018 Meggendorfer Prize for best paper engineered artist book, a Fulbright Research Fellowship to China, and grants from the Independence Foundation, Leeway Foundation, En Foco, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, CFEVA (Center for Emerging Visual Artists), New York Foundation for the Arts, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Puffin Foundation and Society for Photographic Education. She has attended many fully funded artist residencies including those at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Yaddo, the Macdowell Colony, Sacatar, the Vermont Studio Center, the Delaware Contemporary, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Visual Studies Workshop, the Institute of Electronic Arts at Alfred University, the Millay Colony and the Alden B. Dow Center for Creativity. Her solo show "Wanderer/Wonderer: the Pop-ups of Colette Fu" was presented at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2016/17. Curator Krystyna Wasserman stated "Although Fu’s books are motionless, their exuberant shapes, intense colors, and closely interwoven pop-up pages give the impression of being alive. Her themes are largely inspired by her personal experiences, but her art also embodies—and inspires—feelings of joy, sorrow, and curiosity experienced by all of humankind...Each of Fu’s pop-up books tells a story. She is a fearless wanderer who shares her wonders and helps us understand the world around us."

Press:
The Jealous Curator

Click here to see the press release for the "Lucky 13" group exhibition.

View/purchase available artwork below.