MAGAZINE | INSTITUTE | CURRENT ISSUE | ARTIST DIRECTORY | SHOP
WORLD COLLAGE DAY | KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Post: Rethink the Future
at The Blender Gallery in Glyfada, Greece through 30 April 2022. The meta unfortunately is the loss of innocence! It is the realization that tomorrow will probably not be as we imagine or as we wish it to be. Konstantions Patsios, Valentina Biasetti, Alexandros Maganiotis, and Demetrio Di Grado express a critical reflection on the contemporary: who we are and who we will be. Collage, for its extreme synthetic ductility, along with iconographic research and the use of metaphor as a communicative and reflective tool, allowed the artists to express their vision of the world at various levels. The exhibition was curated by Francesco Piazza. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
This Woman's Work
at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Alumni Gallery through 10 April 2022. “This Woman’s Work” is an exploration of the representation and materiality of the feminine in our culture through the manipulation of mass-produced materials and the performative and pastiche elements of post-modern discourse. Artists Ana Vizcarra Rankin, Daria Souvorova, Sofya Mirvis, and Brian James Spies explore what femininity is in our culture right now through mediums and methodologies rooted as much in traditional notions of “women’s work” as they are in dialogue with contemporary art and culture. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Shattering Expectations
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Society puts a lot of pressure on women to be a certain way. Elysé Jokinen creates collage art to shatter those expectations. Jokinen starts by collecting, altering and intuitively arranging images. Once the clippings find their perfect coordinates on the page, they’re glued by hand with classic rock playing in the background. Her work reminds viewers that there’s beauty in who you are, no matter what you’re told to be. It represents freedom, femininity, equality and yes, a bit of magic. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Men on Mars
Mary A. Johnson at Box13 ArtSpace in Houston, Texas, USA through 30 April 2022. A window glowing in pinks and reds of an imaginary Martian landscape reminiscent of the idealized American West, Men on Mars investigates how myth plays a central role in how we experience our own spaces and selves and colors our perception of others. It uses imagery of recent corporate space travel while sardonicizing themes of adventure, exploration and national exceptionalism found in mythic structures. The work pulls from ancient Chinese myth texts Shan Hai Jin and Journey to the West and hybridizes them with American mythology: historical (e.g., Paul Bunyan), contemporary (e.g., Captain America), and ideal (e.g., The American Dream). MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Sensitive
Carolyn Boll at Galerie ERGA in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 30 March-3 April 2022. Using her collage book, A Day in the Life of a Highly Sensitive Person, as a departure point, Carolyn Boll's “Sensitive” reflects the playful potential of the partnering between poetry, image, and dance. Just in time for National Poetry Month with this year’s theme of intimacy, Boll named the show “Sensitive” because of her collage book, created over many years of coming out, and also because of the layers of meaning the word has for her. It is a word that is too often used to suggest one should be less sensitive than they are, when sensitivity is actually such a valuable gift. Boll also loves how the word evokes secrets as in “sensitive information“. MORE
COLLAGE COMMUNITIES
Nashville Collage Collective
The Nashville Collage Collective was at first a collaborative foursome, Lisa Haddad, Eva Sochorova, robert bruce scott, and Randy L Purcell, which eventually became The Four Corners, allowing the Collective to open itself to the larger community. Meeting in studios and public places since 2010, members share whatever they bring to the table resulting in a communal stash of materials, cross-pollinating partnerships and inspiration for beginners and pros alike. The collective’s goal is to maintain the good thing that has evolved over the past decade: a safe space for expression with respect for any creative process involving the juxtaposition of stuff. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Responsibility & Memory
Santa Barbara, California, USA. Jana Zimmer’s work includes monotype, collage, assemblage and mixed media on the themes of historical and political responsibility and memory. Zimmer recently participated in Kolaj Institute's Politics and Collage Residency and she was a panelist at COLLAGE::BOOKS Symposium at Volume 2 MTL in 2019. MORE
*****
The International Directory of Collage Communities is a survey of collage networks, guilds, communities, and projects as well as online efforts and groups focused on collage research. LEARN MORE
*****
Current Issue
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. We not only hope you enjoy the articles and images in Kolaj 34, we hope it leads you to asking great questions.
PRINT MAGAZINE
Kolaj 34
From Rockwall, Texas to Belarus to Dublin, Ireland, Kolaj 34 offers an international view of collage. In this issue we look at how the medium is being used to critique fashion advertising, build community, and investigate Black, Victorian spirituality. Writers wrestle with ideas about illusionary spaces, the psychology of the creative process, and concepts that expand our understanding of collage.
Each issue of Kolaj Magazine shows how collage artists are making their way through the world. International in scope, we explore all aspects of collage and its impact on society and culture. MORE
Recent Publications
ORDER A COPY
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. He takes the reader on a tour from the Megalithic Temples of Malta to Brú na Bóinne in Ireland to the Confederate monuments of Obion County, Tennessee to the empty column in the center of Birr, County Offaly, Ireland. Kadour asks us to consider monuments as sites of collective memory and as places to reflect upon history, even when that history is false or misleading. He then shows us what happens when collage artists reimagine these spaces 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, which, from 1747 to 1915, commemorated the Duke of Cumberland's 1745 victory over the Scots at Culloden, as 21st century beacons of hope and reconciliation. 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
transitional MOMENTS
transitional MOMENTS: restoring equilibrium through the art of collage includes one hundred collages selected from over 2000 submissions created from 600 collage packets sent to artists around the world for World Collage Day 2021 by the Arizona Collage Collective. transitional MOMENTS "reflects our current state of uncertainty as we wrestle with feeling constrained, disoriented and suspended in air between what was and what will be. Yet, these thresholds, unsettling as they are, can be spaces of great creativity and transformation," writes ACC's Suzanne Winkel. MORE
NEW BOOK
Oh, Money! Money!
by Eleanor H. Porter
Kolaj Institute is pleased to announce the publication of Oh, Money! Money!by Eleanor H. Porter and illustrated by a collective of collage artists. In Porter’s 1918 novel, a Chicago multi-millionaire struggles to decide to whom he should leave his money. The book is a time capsule of early 20th century American life with a strong focus on the lives of women and observations about material culture and communities before the rampant consumerism of the 1920s and the Great Depression. To illustrate the book, Kolaj Institute organized a residency that brought together ten artists who worked collaboratively to make sixty-three collages that interpret Porter’s novel for a 21st century audience. 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
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
SPECIAL EDITION
World Collage Day 2021
In honour of World Collage Day, May 8, 2021, Kolaj Magazine is releasing a special edition of the magazine. The Special Edition is full of Cut-Out Pages and stories from inspiring collage artists. MORE
Note: The World Collage Day Special Edition is not included in a regular Kolaj Magazine subscription.
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
COLLAGE COMMUNITIES
The International Directory of Collage Communities
The 104-page book is a survey of collage networks, guilds, communities, and projects as well as online efforts and groups focused on collage research. For each community, the directory presents their key activities, mission, how to join, and a bit of their history. Copious images illustrate the book. 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.
