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Nicholas Tan Reimagines AUPEN’s Signature Silhouette at His First Solo Exhibition in Manila

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Jhun Rick Formalejo

<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787469748345Nicholas Tan_2.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/></div><div><br/></div><p>At what point does a design object become an artwork? For <strong>Nicholas Tan</strong>, the distinction may not matter at all.</p><p>The <strong>AUPEN</strong> founder is known for creating sculptural handbags that have found their way into the wardrobes—and photographs—of some of the world’s most recognizable style figures. Now, for his first solo exhibition in Manila, Tan takes one of his most familiar designs beyond fashion, stripping it of its original function and reimagining its silhouette across paintings, sculptures, textiles, and installations.</p><p>Presented at<strong> 125 PROJECTS</strong> in NBS Park, Mandaluyong City, Tan’s exhibition runs until <strong>August 30, 2026</strong>. Given complete carte blanche to transform the gallery, Tan uses the exhibition to explore form, function, and memory through the abstract shape of AUPEN’s Purpose bag.</p><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470498629DSC_1635.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/></div><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787469872323Installation View_2.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>From Bag to Canvas</strong></div><p>The starting point is a bag Tan designed in 2023. The Purpose is among AUPEN’s most recognizable silhouettes, and its shape became the foundation for an expansive body of work. In the gallery, the familiar outline appears in unexpected materials and contexts—on canvas and fabric, and as sculptural forms that no longer function as handbags.</p><p>“So for this exhibition, I took this shape, and I started experimenting, and conceptualizing it, and putting it across different surfaces,” Tan explains.</p><p>It is a natural progression for a designer who has long regarded the handbag as more than an accessory. Tan sees fashion and art as closely intertwined, particularly in the way objects can carry ideas and enter people’s everyday lives.</p><p>“For me, I see fashion and art as the same thing,” he says. “The bag has been a canvas for art.”</p><p>That idea becomes especially apparent when the Purpose is removed from its practical context. A handbag is designed to move. It accompanies its owner to a first date, a dinner, a club, or any number of places where a traditional painting or sculpture might never go. For Tan, that mobility gives fashion a unique ability to make art part of everyday experience.</p><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470050464DSC_1963.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>When Function Gives Way to Form</strong></div><p>The exhibition considers what happens when a design is stripped of its practical purpose. The Purpose bag’s recognizable silhouette remains, but its hardware and utility fall away, allowing the shape itself to become the subject.</p><p>This shift invites visitors to reconsider how an object’s meaning is formed. Is the Purpose still a bag when it can no longer be carried? Or does its identity change once it becomes a visual symbol?</p><p>For Tan, the answer lies somewhere between fashion and art. Rather than choosing one category over the other, he uses the familiar shape to move freely between them.</p><div><br/></div><div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470571588Installation View_4.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/></div><div style="text-align:center"><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470595047DSC_1622.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/></div><div style="text-align:center"><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><br/></div><div><strong>A Shape With a Memory</strong></div><p>The Purpose bag has accumulated its own cultural history through the people and places associated with it. Its appearances on global style figures including Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Hailey Bieber, and Olivia Rodrigo have contributed to the silhouette becoming recognizable beyond its original function as an accessory.</p><p>“Each time, it takes on a different perspective,” Tan says. “And that’s why it was very easy for me to investigate this across my different artworks.”</p><p>Seeing multiple iterations of the same form together further changes its visual language. Where a handbag is typically encountered as a singular object, the exhibition allows Tan to repeat, multiply, distort, and reinterpret the silhouette. The result is a study of how context can transform something familiar into something new.</p><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470616088Beyoncé all smiles with AUPEN ’s Purpose bag.png" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">Beyoncé all smiles with AUPEN ’s Purpose bag</span></span></span></div><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470634469Olivia Rodr igo seen here with an AUPEN bag..png" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">Olivia Rodrigo seen here with an AUPEN bag</span></span></span></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>Making Memories Through Play</strong></div><p>That same interest in memory extends to the exhibition itself. Tan incorporates playful elements and games into some of the works, inviting visitors to interact with the space rather than simply observe it.</p><p>For Tan, memory is often created through participation—by doing something different, having fun, and experiencing something firsthand. In this sense, the exhibition isn’t intended to be entirely passive. It asks visitors to engage with the works, discover their details, and, in some cases, play along for a chance to win special prizes, such as a bag charm Tan personally designed for this exhibition.</p><p>The idea also connects back to fashion. Clothes and accessories are often tied to specific moments in our lives: what we wore on a first date, the bag we carried on a trip, or the outfit associated with a particular night. By incorporating interactive elements into the exhibition, Tan extends that relationship between object and memory into the gallery.</p><div><br/></div><div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470690088photos from opening reception _ 4.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/></div><div style="text-align:center"><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>Beyond the Designer-Artist Divide</strong></div><p>The shift from fashion designer to artist also reflects a larger evolution in Tan’s creative identity. Before AUPEN, his path was markedly different: he was a national swimmer for Singapore and studied biology. Moving from science and sport into fashion, and now into art, has made him increasingly conscious of how limiting self-imposed definitions can be.</p><p>“What I learned is that my mind, my mindset was a thing that was limiting me,” Tan says. “A lot of the limitations or definitions that I put on myself. Once I was able to break free from there, I realized I could do anything.”</p><p>It is perhaps this idea that sits at the heart of the exhibition. Rather than treating his background in fashion as a boundary, Tan uses it as a point of departure. The Purpose bag becomes a shape to think with—one that can exist simultaneously as a product, a design object, a cultural symbol, and an artwork.</p><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470739747photos from opening reception _ 2.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>Seeing the Purpose Differently</strong></div><p>Creating an entire body of work around one silhouette has also changed how Tan sees his own design.</p><p>“Usually, you know, with the Purpose bag, you only see one bag at a time, one shape at a time,” he explains. “Whereas over here (pointing towards the canvas he made), you see, when you lay out all the different shapes, it takes on a different visual language, and a different meaning.”</p><p>The repetition is important. A single Purpose bag communicates one thing; a room filled with variations of its form communicates something else entirely. Together, the works create associations that aren’t necessarily present when the object is encountered on its own.</p><p>The exhibition consequently becomes a way for Tan to see his own creation from a new perspective—not as a finished product, but as a form with room to evolve.</p><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470774808DSC_1608.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>Coming Full Circle in Manila</strong></div><p>The decision to stage the exhibition in Manila adds another layer of personal meaning. Tan’s relationship with the city predates AUPEN. As a former national swimmer for Singapore, he visited Manila frequently when he was younger for Southeast Asian competitions. Beyond the competitions themselves, he remembers the city as a place of youthful adventures with teammates.</p><p>“Manila has a lot of memories for me growing up,” he recalls. “I remember sneaking out with the different teams here after our competitions to, you know, do crazy [things].”</p><p>Years later, Manila becomes the setting for another milestone. This time, Tan returns not as an athlete but as a designer and artist presenting a body of work that has existed in his imagination for years.</p><p>“I had thought about the pieces and a lot of the concepts for the sculptures and the paintings for a really long time,” he says. “So this is my first time putting it all together and actually realizing it in actuality.”</p><div><br/></div><div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470807027DSC_1953.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>From Concept to Experience</strong></div><p>The exhibition represents more than AUPEN moving into the gallery. It is an opportunity for Tan to test what happens when the familiar rules of his own practice are removed. The Purpose bag remains at the center, but its role changes. No longer something to be carried, it becomes something to contemplate, reinterpret, and experience.</p><p>Alongside the exhibition, 125 PROJECTS is also hosting a designer pop-up featuring rare AUPEN releases. Among the highlights are two Manila-exclusive purple iterations of the Nirvana bag, including a limited edition of 125 pieces worldwide, hand-signed by Tan as a tribute to 125 PROJECTS. The Purpose bag is likewise available exclusively through the gallery in Black, Tweed Blue, and Tweed Sakura.</p><p>The pop-up offers a reminder of where these works began: in fashion. But inside the exhibition, Tan asks visitors to look beyond the product and toward the possibilities of the form itself.</p><p>Ultimately, the exhibition is less concerned with defining whether something is fashion or art than with questioning why it needs to be one or the other in the first place. For a designer who has already moved from swimming to biology to handbags to art, the answer seems fittingly open-ended.</p><p>If a familiar shape can carry a different meaning simply by changing its surface, context, or function, perhaps the most important thing an object can do is keep changing.</p><div><br/></div><div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1787470874109Nicholas Tan_1.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong><em>Presented at 125 PROJECTS in NBS Park, Mandaluyong City, Nicholas Tan’s exhibition runs until August 30, 2026.</em></strong></div>

<p>AUPEN founder Nicholas Tan, who is known for creating sculptural handbags, takes one of his most familiar designs beyond fashion, stripping it of its original function and reimagining its silhouette across paintings, sculptures, textiles, and installations.</p>

AUPEN founder Nicholas Tan, who is known for creating sculptural handbags, takes one of his most familiar designs beyond fashion, stripping it of its original function and reimagining its silhouette across paintings, sculptures, textiles, and installations.