Colette Fu 傅三三

With the help of a Fulbright fellowship, I began photographing for this project in 2008. 25 of the 55 minority tribes of China reside in Yunnan Province and comprise only 8% of the nation’s population, with the Han representing the majority. My mother is a member of the black Yi tribe; her grandfather was Lung Yun 龙云, governor of Yunnan from 1927-1945 and commander-in-chief of the 1st Army Group. Each book measures 13x19" open and is bound with black iris cloth. I am currently working on new books for this series and have been refining them larger to 17x25". This work is still in progress...

As Philadelphia is a “City of Firsts” for its historic sites and centuries-old buildings, it has become known as one of America’s most haunted cities. I have incorporated my own anxieties into each piece. Each 36x53" pop-up is printed with Archival Pigment Inks, mounted onto card stock and is bound in Philly newspapers and Joss paper- also known as ghost money, which are sheets of paper that are burned in traditional Chinese deity or ancestor worship ceremonies and in Chinese funerals. Special thanks to the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Robert M. MacNamara Foundation for giving me the support and facilities to create this body of work.

I began and finished my first series of 21 pop-up books shortly after finishing graduate school; they have become a sort of travelogue, as they were created at artist residencies around the country. The books have pull-tabs, rotating disks, and foldouts - all essential elements of a standard children's pop-up book. They measure 16x24" open, and are bound with green and black iris cloth. The titles are heat foiled with copper letters and numbers to mimic volumes of an encyclopedia. Special thanks to the Alden B. Dow Center for Creativity, the Millay Colony, Visual Studies Workshop, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and the Kimmel Nelson Harding Center for the Arts.