A tiger mask drawn on a hard fruit shell.

In the early 1970s, Vu Dan Tan, who was fond of using mask as an artistic medium, began exploring and experimenting with the possibilities for creating masks with bamboo, dried fruits, woven baskets and other organic utilitarian objects. Masks remained a predominant art form in Tan’s artistic practice by the 1980s, and for many years he considered himself a ‘mask-artist’.

The artist’s studio was initially conceptualised as a place where visitors could appreciate and purchase different kinds of masks. The artist stopped creating masks in the early 1990s with the boom of tourism in Hanoi; local gift shops started to appropriate and simplify his designs of masks and transformed them into a type of mass-produced souvenir.