MAGAZINE | INSTITUTE | CURRENT ISSUE | ARTIST DIRECTORY | SHOP
CALLS TO ARTISTS | WORLD COLLAGE DAY
FROM THE PRINT MAGAZINE
Mythical Creatures
In Kolaj 37, we report on a new book by Lynn Gall. Mythical Creatures in Collage offers a printed collection of surreal collage figures that blend science fiction, emerging mythology, and speculative folklore with the artist’s “craftsmanship and an unusual point of view.” The fifty collages in the book are each paired with what Gall calls a dingbat. These simple, free-floating, often two-bit collages add a whimsical element to the page spreads. LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ISSUE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Dialogue Among Colors & Textures
Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Maryse Parant doesn't think there’s a particular approach to her work since collage is always here, present, as a potentiality. She doesn't cut or play with images. Her interest is in the dialogue among colors and textures. Shapes, how they relate or how she can undo that relationship, trying to gauge the resistance or the affinities. She dislikes boredom. Collage aims at breaking the constructs around her to find a new voice, an unexpected gesture, a posture, an unpredictable link. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Swan Song
at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit through 26 March 2023. Swan Song features the individual and collaborative work of Halima Afi Cassells and Shanna Merola, combining their photo-based collages alongside sculpture and installation. This exhibition examines the cause and effects of colonization, resource extraction, climate crisis, and corporate domination. While Merola’s dystopian landscapes seem fractured beyond repair by free market deregulation, Cassells work manifests the collective liberation of both people and land from the grip of white heteropatriarchal systems of oppression. MORE
WORLD COLLAGE DAY
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, USA
Cut to the Chase
Celebrate the art of collage with San Francisco artists participating in the monthly Collage-a-Rama collage-making sessions at Arc Gallery. In conjunction with "Cut to the Chase" a Collage-a-Rama Exhibition in the Project Gallery at Arc Gallery, San Francisco, California, USA from April 15 through May 6, 2023. Featured artists for an Artist Talk online via Zoom. Register in advance. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Visually Poetic
at Next Act Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA through 19 March 2023. Laura Fuller-Cooper creates visually poetic art that often incorporates the written word. By combining imagery from historic documents, advertising, natural elements, hand-drawing and watercolor, her collaged visions explore personal biography and memory. Laura Fuller-Cooper shows us that all artists are poets in their own way. “Visually Poetic” is being shown in conjunction with Mickle Maher’s play There Is Happiness That Morning Is. The exhibition is curated by Jim Toth. MORE
KOLAJ LIVE ONLINE
Artists in the Archives:
European Collagists' Perspectives on American Archives
Saturday, March 11, 2023, 2PM EST.
LEARN MORE
CALL TO ARTISTS
Paper + Post
Deadline: Friday, 28 April 2023. Paper + Post is an international open call for mail art with collage as the theme. Postcard-sized mail art will be presented in an exhibition at Boise State University, “Paper + Post”, 10-28 May 2023. This exhibition will feature collage and mixed media works highlighting current worldwide trends in collage. The organizers ask participants to respond to life during the pandemic these past three years. They welcome participants to ponder the question, “How has living with the pandemic for the past three years changed your life?” Upon conclusion of the exhibition, artwork will be preserved in Boise State’s Special Collections and Archives at Albertsons Library. Paper + Post’s open call for collage-themed mail art is being held in conjunction with World Collage Day. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Mixing Different Techniques
Karlsruhe, Germany. Carmen Palomero's collage comes in different forms: paper, mixed media and digital. She is an analog and digital photographer, who also does some post production. She is self-taught artist, interested in learning and mixing different techniques. She has participated in a number of collage workshops. She is a member of the Club de Collage con La Santa Patrona and Obrador de Poesia offered by Ediciones Deliciosas. MORE
CALLS TO ARTISTS
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
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
Kolaj 37 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.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
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.
