MAGAZINE | INSTITUTE | CURRENT ISSUE | ARTIST DIRECTORY | SHOP
CALLS TO ARTISTS
FROM THE PRINT MAGAZINE
The Journey
In Kolaj 36, MJ Connors Davison walks us through how an Exquisite Corpse exhibition became an exquisite community. What began as a World Collage Day project in 2021 became an exhibition at The New Zone Gallery in Eugene, Oregon, USA in 2022. She writes, "In each work, the head sets the mood, from playful to ponderous. The most common element left intact, as found in the ephemera, was the human face. From there departed the rest of the form, composed of pieces that were recognizably anatomical to metaphorically suggestive." MORE
COLLAGE COMMUNITIES
Special Agent Collage Collective
The collective began as a kit-based collage project posted on Instagram in August 2021. Materials were mailed to anyone who requested them and Special Agent status (membership) was granted to everyone who completed the first mission. There is almost always an open mission that can be joined by anyone. There are also monthly collage hangouts and a community newsletter. Agent 001 writes, “Don’t let the intrigue and dark sunglasses fool you. Underneath it all we are a somewhat nerdy group of collagists who never stop being amazed at what magic can unfold from a few scraps of paper, a sharp blade, and a fresh glue stick. The compulsion to cut and paste is strong with us.” MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Releasing Structure
Carnation, Washington, USA. Andrea Lewicki's creative practice is aimed at releasing structure. The art she produces is often multi-generational in that she finishes work then repurposes it, sometimes immediately. Most of her time is spent cutting and cropping materials she will later stitch into new contexts. There is catharsis in alternating these convergent and divergent processes which, together, are a form of reinvention. MORE
KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS
Call for Papers, Artists & Projects
How do you want to manifest at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2023? Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium, 7-11 June 2023. Our mission is to create a platform that allows us to explore critical issues around collage (how it is curated and presented, its role in contemporary art, and the tensions between collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a movement.) Responding to the Call is how you tell us that you would like to take on a presenting role at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2023. The early deadline is Sunday, 29 January 2023. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Reshaped Reality
Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom. Sylwia Kramarz is constantly experimenting with new techniques and materials to express and represent her ideas. By using unconnected images and having different ideas at the same time, it is essential for her to be alert to what is happening and then to reveal what she is feeling. She likes producing images that encourage a viewer to feel some emotion, that cause a reaction. Modifying existing images by cutting them out, folding and rearranging them, gives her a real sense of exploration in which she can experience how the past is mixing with the intuition of the present, to form “reshaped reality”. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
The Girl Who Drew Memories
Gail Winbury at the Wilson Museum at the Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester, Vermont, USA through 25 February 2023. “The Girl Who Drew Memories” situates Gail Winbury’s art at the intersection of vulnerability and creativity. Her large-scale abstract paintings and prolific collage work transform what is often inexpressible into resonant narratives in visual form, expanding how we make sense of our memories, emotions, and lived experiences. Original poetry composed by local writers in response to her work will further animate the galleries as will an interactive makerspace where visitors can engage directly in the playful process of collage. MORE
CALLS TO ARTISTS
CURATING COLLAGE
WORKSHOP
Deadline: 28 December 2022
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COLLAGE ARTISTS RESIDENCY:
SCOTLAND
Early Deadline: 30 December 2022
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Women in the Archives
Wednesday, 14 December 2022,
7PM EST.
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Kolaj Institute Open House
Saturday, 17 December 2022,
2PM EST.
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NEWS
What's Next for Kolaj Institute?
We created Kolaj Institute to support artists, curators, and writers who seek to study, document, and disseminate ideas that deepen our understanding of collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century movement. We are bringing together community through residencies where artists explore the relationship between collage and other mediums such as street art, poetry, illustration, and more. Now we need your help. Your donation will provide critical support at this early stage and allow this organization to take root so that it can serve the community for years to come. LEARN MORE
NEW BOOK
PoetryXCollage Volume Three 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 26 December 2022 to receive the book as your first item. LEARN MORE
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).
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.
NEW ISSUE
Kolaj #36
Barbara Bertino's Sailing the Dry Land graces the front cover of Kolaj 36 which we think is an apt metaphor for a print magazine where each issue travels around the world of collage. In the print magazine, we travel from the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada to Rio de Janeiro to Kampala, Uganda to report on the international community of collage artists and what this 21st century art movement is doing. Kelli Bodle takes us back in time to explore the legacy of Italian Proto-Arte Povera Artist Salvatore Meo. We hear from a collective of composers in Peru (all of whom are women) who are making collage heard as well as seen. We get an update on how the U.S. Supreme Court may be changing Fair Use. And we consider the painterly influences and attitudes of collage artists, whether two-bit collage is a sort of minimalism, and how one artist came to love collage in motion. We hope each issue of Kolaj Magazine takes you someplace you've never been. MORE
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
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.
