Nicholas Tan’s Aupen bags have travelled the world. Now, he’s bringing them into the gallery

Much of the exhibition begins with the familiar silhouette of his bags, then pulls it apart. One piece strips the bag down to its shape and removes its practical purpose, turning it into a vase. The gesture sounds simple, even playful, but the question underneath is heavier: when an object loses the function society gave it, what remains?

Tan knows something about starting again. Before fashion, he was a competitive swimmer for Singapore and won gold in the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay at the 2007 SEA Games. He later moved through modelling, business and fashion before founding Aupen.

“I think many times you gotta break yourself down and see what’s left,” he says. “Then you build yourself back up to find out who you really are inside.”

That sentiment gives the exhibition its focus. The works aren’t meant to sit on a pedestal. Tan wants visitors to move around them, notice their scale and encounter the materials in person. There is even a ring-toss game, with an exclusive heart-shaped charm awarded to those who win. It sounds almost mischievous for a contemporary art exhibition, and that’s precisely the point.

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For Gwen Bautista, founder of 125 Projects, the collaboration reflects the gallery’s interest in artists and designers whose practices move beyond familiar categories. Rather than asking Tan to fit an existing programme, the gallery gave him room to realise ideas he had been carrying for years.

“We’re interested and invested in how the practice of this artist or designer is positioned in the ecology of things,” Bautista says.

That also explains why Manila made sense. Tan has visited the Philippines since he was young, travelling here for regional swimming competitions and forming memories of the city beyond the confines of the Games Village. He remembers sneaking out with fellow athletes to explore Manila. Returning now, he finds a city that has changed, yet still feels familiar enough to stir something.

There is another reason the exhibition feels timely: Bautista sees the meeting of fashion and art as part of a broader shift in how people experience culture after the pandemic. Traditional categories have begun to loosen. A designer can be an artist; a gallery can become a place for play; a handbag can become sculpture.

And perhaps that last idea is the easiest to understand. We already live among objects that carry meaning far beyond their practical use. A watch can become a keepsake. A dress can hold a memory. A bag can travel with someone through an entire chapter of life.

Tan’s exhibition takes that everyday object and asks us to look again.

For him, the work is ultimately about possibility—and having the nerve to see beyond the role you first gave yourself. “I think it’s really how much you can do or what you can do or how you do something is really just in your head,” he says.

For a designer whose bags have already made their way from Singapore to Hollywood, perhaps the gallery is simply the next place they were always meant to go.

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