MAGAZINE | INSTITUTE | CURRENT ISSUE | ARTIST DIRECTORY | SHOP
CALLS TO ARTISTS | WORLD COLLAGE DAY
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Your Myth Here
Douglas Tausik Ryder at PRJCTLA in Los Angeles, California, USA through 22 April 2023. “Your Myth Here” presents a series of five large-scale new works, which stand up to 9 feet tall. The monumental pieces explore the role of traditional sculptures and collective ideas within a society absorbed by mass media. The exhibition showcases the artist’s new thematic collection of sculptures, using industrial processes for exploring art, a metaphor for the effect of technology on our psyches. He creates this visual metaphor by hollowing out familiar cultural subjects and overlaying them with artificially generated and distorted mass media collage. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Freedom to be Messy
Chicago, Illinois, USA. Tamara Codua sees her artwork as her freedom to be messy: no rules, no regulations, just she and her imagination. She loves color, elegance and boldness. Born and raised in Moldova, in 2008 she made Chicago her home. While learning to live in a different country, she unlearned how to express herself through art. Collages are her regained voice. MORE
FROM THE PRINT MAGAZINE
Unconnected Yet
What happens when you bring together sixty-four international artists and invite them to present artwork about science? In Kolaj 37, we offer a preview of "Unconnected Yet", a collage exhibition that imagines the gap between art and science at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata, India. Co-curator Todd Bartel writes, "At its center, ‘Unconnected Yet’ began by wondering how to connect art with science in a forward-looking way.” The image here is Lid by Michael Waraksa. LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PRINT MAGAZINE & GET A COPY
WORLD COLLAGE DAY
LISBON, PORTUGAL
Imperfect Collages
Lisbon, Portugal's Espaço Imperfeito, a new cultural space, invites you to join them on World Collage Day to participate in a series of two workshops led by collagist Teresa Ogando. The event is free of charge but you must RSVP ahead of time by sending an email as space is limited. Please bring scissors and a glue stick; the rest will be provided for you. MORE
WORLD COLLAGE DAY IS SATURDAY, 13 MAY 2023. LEARN MORE & GET THE SPECIAL EDITION.
CALL TO ARTISTS
Dance in Collages 2023
At Karel Pippich Theatre in Chrudim, Czech Republic. This exhibition of collages will be held during the 20th International Festival Jazz Dance Open in Pardubice, Czech Republic. The art will be installed in The Karel Pippich Theatre Chrudim 1 May-20 June 2023. The topic is “Dance” in general. How you interpret that is up to you. Collages can be either analog or digital. Deadline to submit: Saturday, 15 April 2023. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Negotiating with My Inner Child
Kyiv, Ukraine. Annete Sagal believes "that ART is an occupation that will salvage the young generation. As an artist and individual, I strive for equality, stability and sustainable life. Making art is, first, a conversation with myself. I listen, learn, negotiate with my inner child, and together we collaborate to produce a unique work of art: collage, photography or even a sensual mixing of two tracks. Our art is vulnerable yet powerful. It is honest, see for yourself. I consider myself as an ambassador of Ukrainian culture, with collage art in particular. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Parties composantes
Mathieu Lacroix at McBride Contemporain in Montreal, Quebec, Canada through 8 April 2023. Mathieu Lacroix’s work occupies a unique space in the conceptual art sphere, combining complex intellectual procedures with handmade DIY aesthetics, and the idea of the “sketch” as a central organizing principle. In this exhibition, Lacroix has created a comprehensive accounting of his practice so far and achieved a summation moment of his artistic interests, a fusion of seemingly disparate notions, feelings, and states. Lacroix brings the viewer’s attention to various important and serious aspects of life, from the issue of consumerism and overconsumption, to the sort of personal emotional dislocations we all experience, to the racial alienation of minorities, including but not limited to the black community, and other social ills, shared experiences, and ethical tears in the fabric of our cultural unity as human beings. MORE
Registration is Open!
Kolaj Fest New Orleans is 7-11 June 2023
LEARN MORE | CALLS TO ARTISTS | REGISTER
CALLS TO ARTISTS
Collage Poet in Residence
at MERZ in Sanquhar, Scotland
6-20 May 2023
DEADLINE:
Saturday, 8 April 2023.
LEARN MORE
Queer Men Artist Lab:
New Orleans
21-25 June 2023
DEADLINE:
Sunday, 14 May 2023.
LEARN MORE
Folklore & Collage
Virtual Residency
June & July 2023
DEADLINE:
Sunday, 14 May 2023.
LEARN MORE
Collage as Street Art Residency
4-11 June 2023
in New Orleans
DEADLINE:
Sunday, 16 April 2023.
LEARN MORE
Collage Art & Book Market
at Kolaj Fest New Orleans
Saturday, 10 June 2023
DEADLINE:
Saturday, 6 May 2023.
LEARN MORE
Collage in Motion
at Kolaj Fest
New Orleans
DEADLINE:
Sunday, 30 April 2023.
LEARN MORE
PRINT MAGAZINE
Kolaj Magazine relies on our subscribers. Your support of this magazine keeps us going and makes it possible for us to investigate and document collage and to promote a deeper, more complex understanding of the medium and its role in art history and contemporary art.
CURRENT ISSUE
Kolaj #37
Cats. Cats in space. Cats lounging around buildings. San Fran Cat Nap by Matt McCarthy is on the cover of Kolaj 37. This digital collagist from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA “transports viewers to a world that’s similar to our own, but also features massive felines stalking our landscapes” and has a lot of fun doing so.
Kolaj Magazine exists to show how the world of collage is rich, layered, and thick with complexity. By remixing history and culture, collage artists forge new thinking. To understand collage is to reshape one's thinking of art history and redefine the canon of visual culture that informs the present. MORE
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Folklore of the Upper Nithsdale is sent automatically to members of the Silver Scissors & Golden Glue Societies.
These special subscribers support the work of Kolaj Institute while receiving an item from Kolaj each month.
Join before 15 April 2023 to receive your copy.
COLLAGE BOOK
Folklore of the Upper Nithsdale
Stories of Witches, Ghosts, & Other Spirits from Sanquhar, Scotland
Thirty-three collage artists illustrate stories of witches, ghosts, and other spirits from Sanquhar, Scotland. Using stories collected from William Wilson’s 1904 book, artists reimagine these tales in a 21st Century context and invite us to see folklore as the imagination of the past, understood in the present. The book includes an introduction by Ric Kasini Kadour
"We present selections of artwork paired with some of Wilson's original texts," writes Ric Kasini Kadour in the Introduction. The artists "are operating from a 21st century vantage point, a view informed by nearly a century where folklore was academically studied and taught. The transformation was radical...The artists are directing our gaze to why these stories continue to matter today." PURCHASE THE BOOK
Learn more about the project HERE.
Details: 2023 | 130 pages | 9"x6" | ISBN 978-1-927587-67-6
Learn more about Kolaj Institute's Folklore Project HERE
Your donation makes Kolaj Institute's programs & projects possible. This is just one of the ways we are working to elevate collage's standing in the art world. Please make a donation today!
NEW BOOK
PoetryXCollage
Volume Three
PoetryXCollage is a printed journal of artwork and writing which operates at the intersection of poetry and collage. Each issue presents six movements of work by artists and curators. Page spreads are meant to be free zones of thinking where the contributor has chosen all elements of the layout: font, image place, composition, etc. In Volume Three: Adam Farcus (Urbana, Illinois, USA) | Carolina Martins (Lisbon, Portugal) | Émilie Karuna (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) | Jenn Arras (Brooklyn, New York, USA) | Julie Byers (Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia) | Kerrie More (Kalispell, Montana, USA).
POETRY JOURNAL
PoetryXCollage
Volume One
PoetryXCollage is a printed journal of artwork and writing which operates at the intersection of poetry and collage. We are interested in found poetry, blackout poetry, collage poems, haikus, centos, response collages, response poems, word scrambles, concrete poetry, scatter collage poems, and other poems and artwork that inhabit this world. In this issue: Rosemary Rae, El Cajon, California, USA | Cathy Greenhalgh, London, United Kingdom | Jennifer Roche, Chicago, Illinois, USA | doriana diaz, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA | Thomas Mayer, Berlin, Germany l Cheryl Chudyk, Kirkland, Washington, USA
POETRY JOURNAL
PoetryXCollage
Volume Two
Each issue of PoetryXCollage presents six movements of work by artists and curators. Page spreads are meant to be free zones of thinking where the contributor has chosen all elements of the layout: font, image place, composition, etc. In this issue: Anthony D. Kelly, Castle Bar, County Mayo, Ireland l Carla Reyes, Astoria, New York, USA l Janice McDonald, Denver, Colorado, USA l Samantha Brown, Blackrock, County Louth, Ireland l Laura Tafe, Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA l Collaborations by Cathy Greenhalgh, Thomas Mayer, Rosemary Rae, Anthony D. Kelly, & Cheryl Chudyk
NEW BOOK
Wallflowers: Collage as Street Art
Wallflowers: Collage as Street Art explores the intersection of collage and street art. Christopher Kurts recalls the formation of the Kolaj Street Krewe from its creation at Kolaj Fest New Orleans to a guerilla art project during the COVID-19 pandemic to an artist residency for Street Artists. The book contains examples of collage as street art by twenty-four artists from eight countries. MORE
BOOK
Artists in the Archives
Local history museums, archives, and collections are vital to building healthy communities and to anchoring our understanding of the world around us in the place where we live, work, and play. Collage artists have unique skills that are particularly useful in our historical moment. Artists in the Archives contains artworks and commentary as well as an extensive essay by Ric Kasini Kadour about the project that brought twenty-three artists from seven countries to make twenty-four collage prints referencing history material in the archives of the Henry Sheldon Museum. The essay reflects on the role artists can play in the interpretation and presentation of historic material in light of this history. MORE
BOOK
Politics in Collage
In a time where the challenges facing us as individuals and communities have grown to seemingly insurmountable levels, further exacerbated by the increasing toxicity of the political climate, artists are using their work to confront these challenges by engaging their viewers in a higher level of discourse. Through a virtual residency, twenty-five artists created collage works examining complex socio-political issues that contemporary society is contending with, in order to spark meaningful dialogue and inspire deeper engagement. MORE
BOOK
Empty Columns Are a Place to Dream
A companion book to the project of the same name, Ric Kasini Kadour unpacks what monuments are and their role in our communities. The book shows what happens when collage artists reimagine monuments as sites of truth and reconciliation. The book features the collages of eighteen international artists made a series of collages that reimagined the empty column in the center of Birr, County Offaly, Ireland. MORE
BOOK
The Money $how: Cash, Labor, Capitalism & Collage
The Money $how juxtaposes contemporary artwork against fragments of history and literature as a way of showing how collage can help us deconstruct culture and understand the world differently. Artists collage dollar bills into flowers and mine material remnants to tell stories about home economics. MORE
BOOK
Radical Reimaginings
The curators of the 96-page book invited artists who use collage in their practice to put forward a work of art that offers a visual narrative that speaks to the unprecedented change unfolding in 2020. An essay by Ric Kasini Kadour reflects upon collage's unique ability to imagine new realities. Forty artists from nine countries and multiple Indigenous peoples—Salish-Kootenai/Métis-Cree/Sho-Ban, Tlingit/Nisga’a, Oglala/Lakota, and Seneca Nation—offer a variety of perspectives. The voices of Black, Latinx, Native, and white Americans mingle with those from Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Canada, France, and Germany. Artwork is accompanied by a statement in which the artists describe how they want to reimagine the world. MORE
BOOK
Collage Magic
by Emma Anna
Part autobiography, part fantasy, Emma Anna’s vision of The New Old World (aka The NOW) fuses vintage ephemera with modern imaging technologies. Emma shapes this strange world by using the pen tool from Adobe Photoshop as her magic wand, in the process declaring herself to be a “collage magician”. Part artist book, part document of art making, Collage Magic, from La Casa Verde Editions, is Emma Anna’s journey through magic and art. MORE
BOOK
Revolutionary Paths
When the collage is presented in exhibition, it is often done so without the critical framework granted other mediums. In "Revolutionary Paths: Critical Issues in Collage", exhibition curator Ric Kasini Kadour presents examples of collage that represent various aspects and takes on the medium. Each work in the exhibition represents the potential for deeper inquiry and further curatorial exploration of the medium. MORE
BOOK
Cultural Deconstructions
Collage is unique as a medium in that it uses as its material artifacts from the world itself. To harvest those fragments, the artist must first deconstruct culture; they must select, cut, and remove the elements they do not wish to use and then reconstruct work that tells a new story. In "Cultural Deconstructions: Critical Issues in Collage", exhibition curator Ric Kasini Kadour presents examples of collage artists who are deconstructing identity as a way to critique culture. MORE
COLLAGE BOOK
Tissue Box:
A Pandemic Response
Boite à mouchoir: Une réponse à la pandémie. In Spring 2020, as the world was going into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Quebec Collagiste Virginie Maltais felt a deep need for a point of reference. Her solution was a project that asked collage artists from around the world to make a collage using the top of a tissue box. "Small projects are important. You regain your courage and hope when you start and manage to finish something. There is no small project. We do big projects with lots of little steps. Step by step, we move forward. Together. And it is all of these small steps, together, that led to the creation of this book." Maltais worked with Kolaj Institute and Kasini House to produce a bilingual book about the project. MORE
COLLAGE BOOK
Unfamiliar Vegetables: Variations in Collage
Unfamiliar Vegetables is a collection of collage where each of the fifty artists interpreted, in their own way, Carlotta Bonnecaze’s 1892 Carnival float design Familiar Vegetables. Project organizer Christopher Kurts observed, “Unfamiliar Vegetables is an experiment in controlled chaos….tiny variations within each artist’s creative sphere accumulate until the outcomes are as unique as the people creating them.” MORE
Our goal with every issue is that Kolaj Magazine is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of contemporary collage in art, culture, and society. Each issue of Kolaj Magazine is dedicated to reviewing and surveying contemporary collage with an international perspective. We are interested in collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century art movement.
