» Fashion 30

Emerging at the turn of the millennium and continuing until the artist’s passing, Fashion is among Vu Dan Tan’s most iconic series. These works take the form of human-scale, costume-like sculptures constructed from salvaged cardboard. Through a process of folding, cutting, perforating, and painting, the artist transformed such ordinary packaging into elaborate garments that critique standards of female beauty and the excess of consumerism.

The recurring feminine figure mediates on the shifting social and symbolic meanings of womanhood, serving both as an icon of strength and celebration, and a vessel for contradictions: domination versus vulnerability, public persona versus private self, social expectations versus personal desires.