FROM THE PRINT MAGAZINE
Multiplicity: Blackness
| In Kolaj #40, Houston, Texas writer Kelly M. Johnson reviews the exhibition, “Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The first major museum exhibition to illuminate the variety and complexity of Black Americans’ identities and experiences exclusively through collage traveled to The Phillips Collection over the summer. Johnson writes, "Impossible to encapsulate with a single gaze, this boundlessness alongside a plenitude of shimmering cosmic imagery provides the show an empowering, spiritually-ascendant nature." (image: Holy Wars by Jamea Richmond-Edwards) | | | |
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Making Sense of Internal Chaos
| Brussels, Belgium. Through his collage works, Raphaël Vicenzi is just trying to make sense of his own internal chaos, mapping his own internal landscape, and processing thoughts and feelings into a visual form. He is interested in creating meaning from discarded images, inspired by fashion magazines, urban decay, and forgotten places. Always hoping to find unseen connections between elements, teetering on total randomness and controlled impulses, rewriting possibilities through happy accidents and instinctual markings. He is listening to the internal dialogue while his body is busy cutting and re-arranging images until a new story emerges from his unconscious. Everything is being written in real time and in the end, no one knows where it will lead, but let’s enjoy the ride together. | | | |
FROM THE PRINT MAGAZINE
Christine Karapetian's Artist Portfolio
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Jackson Heights, New York, USA. "Embracing these elements is what collage is. It is a process that embraces never knowing what I will end with, instead hoping to find something as I go." Hamlet Meneses unpacked Karapetian’s artwork in the Spring of 2024 as part of Kolaj Institute’s Curating Collage Workshop: “Karapetian works intuitively, primarily employing found materials without a predetermined outcome. Through a process of cutting, pasting, adding, subtracting, and often scraping away, she discovers what she is seeking." A portfolio of artwork appears in Kolaj #40.
Each issue of Kolaj Magazine features portfolios of contemporary artists alongside critical commentary as a means of developing a deeper understanding of collage as both a medium and a genre. To be considered, register with the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory at www.kolajmagazine.com.
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COLLAGE ON VIEW
The Great Indoors
| at Peep Space in Tarrytown, New York, USA through 8 February 2025. "The Great Indoors" is a group exhibition co-curated by Yeon Ji Yoo and Rachel Sydlowski. The exhibition considers the vaster qualities of the psyche and landscape as mirrored in their shared states of endlessness. "The Great Indoors" articulates psychic exploration as an inward journey, an ever-changing kaleidoscopic reflection of self. In this exhibition, the miasma of modernity is interpreted through strategies of beauty as a system of dismantling the depths of self and physical spaces. This collection of artists chase ghosts of past trauma back to the corners, disrupt patriarchy through inner feminine strength, and engage with post-industrial transgressions against nature through a remixing of landscape and architecture. (image: Bronx River Daydreamer by Natalie Collette Wood) | | | |
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Novel, Surreal Worlds
| Brecht, Belgium. Lebasille creates novel, surreal worlds. Playing around with proportions combines elements from vastly different contexts, and makes ages clash. This way, a dialectic transformation of the original images occurs, which allows the observer to reinterpret historic elements in refreshing ways, unveiling future possibilities. Hence, her work is characterized by both a quirky patina and a futuristic feel. | | | |
AT KOLAJ INSTITUTE
Open Studio with Kolaj Institute Artist-in-Residence Marcy McChesney
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During her Solo Residency, San Antonio-based artist, Marcy McChesney is creating a body of work that is specific to the city of New Orleans as a subject itself. The artist is investigating the women of New Orleans and their role in society, whether through family ties, healing capacities, religious practices, etc. This work will be exhibited after the Solo Residency.
On Friday, January 24, 2025, 4-6PM, the public is invited to visit Kolaj Institute Gallery to meet the artist and see how the artwork is progressing.
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SUBSCRIBE TO KOLAJ MAGAZINE TODAY
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. 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.
DON'T MISS OUT!
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CALL TO ARTISTS
Politics in Collage 2025: Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide
| Final Deadline to Apply: Sunday, 12 January 2025. A month-long, virtual/online collage artist residency in January and February 2025. What can collage artists do to counter rising authoritarianism? During this residency, collage artists will work together to make artwork that responds to a global rise in authoritarianism. They will explore the history of political collage and its early 20th century roots in the European anti-fascist movements. They will learn how to read and decode authoritarianism, to understand how it operates, and strategies for resisting or countering it. Discussions and presentations will center on how an artist can make work that picks up the unfinished work of history and contributes to the civic discourse. The Residency is led by Ric Kasini Kadour. Artists will hear from Guest Speakers Martin Mycielski, the Vice-President and Executive Director of the Brussels-based Open Dialogue Foundation, and G.E. Vogt, who will talk about how 21st century collage artists make political collage. Artists in the residency will work together to illustrate and elucidate Mycielski’s The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide. | | | |
CALL TO ARTISTS
Collage in Practice Workshop: 2-23 February 2025
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Final Deadline to Apply: Monday, 13 January 2025. Intended as a clinic for working artists at any level, participants in this workshop will explore how they go about making art and putting it out into the world. Participants will finish the workshop with a deeper understanding of their practice; a strong statement of practice that can be used to communicate with curators, editors, and art professionals; a portfolio of consistent artwork (or a plan to make one); and tools for growing or developing their practice.
This is a virtual Workshop, part of Kolaj Institute's Artist Development program. The Workshop takes place in four, two-hour sessions over the course of four Sundays in February.
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Since 2011, Kolaj Magazine has documented, reported on, and explored the amazing artists who make up the international collage community.
Inside Kolaj #40, you will find large scale collages from Australia, an installation in Finland, a collaborative book of dog collages, activist assemblage art, reimagined fiber, a collage festival in Ukraine, an interview with Dutch collagist Anneke Stil, reviews of exhibitions in Houston, Texas & County Mayo, Ireland, collage books, news from Kolaj Institute in New Orleans, and artist portfolios.
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.
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JOURNAL
PoetryXCollage
Volume 7
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PoetryXCollage is a printed journal of artwork and writing that 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.
PoetryXCollage, Volume Seven includes artwork and writing by Pablo Cabrera Ferralis (Leipzig, Germany); Natalie W Schorr (Greenville, North Carolina, USA); Hanna Madej (Wroclaw, Poland); Dianalog (Palm Springs, Florida, USA); Christy Sheffield Sanford (Saint Augustine, Florida, USA); and a selection of Asemic Writing Collage Poems from Anthony D Kelly, Laura Tafe, Thomas Mayer, and Janice McDonald, with commentary by Ric Kasini Kadour. On the Cover is a detail of BY CHANCE/LA DÉRIVE by Pablo Cabrera Ferralis.
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NEW PUBLICATION
Frankenstein
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This new version of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s classic 19th century novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus features seventy-six illustrations by International Collage Artists who delved into the novel’s rich narrative and visual potential and created thought-provoking artworks that reflect the essence of Frankenstein in a 21st century context.
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NEW PUBLICATION
Magic in the Modern World
Taking a broad view of magic and drawing from multiple histories, the book, Magic in the Modern World, proposes a way to think about magic in the 21st century, what it means to communities, and how it negotiates itself in systems of power. Generously illustrated, the book features the artwork of fifteen collage artists and dozens of historical images.
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ARTSHOP
"I Cut Therefore I Kolaj" T-shirt
Since we started Kolaj Magazine in 2011, people have been asking about t-shirts. Well, we finally made one. We are pleased to announce the "I Cut Therefore I Kolaj" T-shirt. We hope you like it and wear it with pride.
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TRADING CARDS
Kasini House Artshop works with the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory to produce curated packs of the Collage Artist Trading Cards. Each card is a full color, 5.5” x 3.5” postcard with rounded corners. An example of an artist’s work is on the front of the card and the artist’s public contact information is on the back. Collage Artist Trading Cards come in packs of 15.
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About Kolaj Magazine
Kolaj Magazine is a quarterly, printed, art magazine 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. Kolaj is published in Montreal, Quebec by Maison Kasini. Visit Kolaj Magazine online.
WEBSITE | ARTIST DIRECTORY | SHOP
About Kolaj Institute
The mission of Kolaj Institute is to support artists, curators, and writers who seek to study, document, & disseminate ideas that deepen our understanding of collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century movement. We operate a number of initiatives meant to bring together community, investigate critical issues, and raise collage’s standing in the art world.
WEBSITE | CALLS TO ARTISTS | SUPPORT
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