EVENT

World Collage Day 2024

World Collage Day is 11 May 2024. We invite artists, art centres, museums, galleries, schools, and communities to celebrate World Collage Day by hosting events and projects that bring communities together. Ideas include collage making meet-ups, docent-led tours of collage in a museum or gallery, activities for kids, slideshows or talks that appreciate collage’s role in contemporary art and art history, exhibitions of collage, and more. Tell us about the events and projects you are planning.

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FUNDRAISER

A New Home for Kolaj Institute

In January 2024, Kolaj Institute moved into a 1200 square foot space in the New Orleans Healing Center on the corner of St. Claude and St. Roch Avenues. The space serves as an exhibition gallery, residency center, artist studio, library and archive. We need your help to make it happen!

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CALLS TO ARTISTS

Collage in Practice Workshop, April-May 2024

Early Deadline: Sunday, 31 March 2024
Final Deadline: Sunday, 14 April 2024

Intended as a clinic for working artists at any level, participants in the Collage in Practice workshop will explore how they go about making art and putting it out into the world. How to make a living as an artist? How to get your work seen? How to get an exhibition? How to get reviewed? How to make a life for yourself as an artist? What does that even mean? These are some of the challenges artists face when they want to take their art practice to the next level. 

Photography & Collage Artist Residency

Early Deadline: Saturday, 30 March 2024
Final Deadline: Sunday, 14 April 2024

A five-day, in-person residency that invites photographers and collage artists to come together in dialogue, learn from one another, and make artwork for a series of exhibitions that explore the intersection of collage and photography.

Poetry & Collage Residency 2024

Early Deadline: Sunday, 7 April 2024
Final Deadline: Sunday, 21 April 2024

In four virtual meetings over the course of the May and through ongoing, online discussion, artists will leave the residency with a deeper understanding of the intersection of collage and poetry. Individual participants will each be invited to create and submit 3-5 page spreads to the PoetryXCollage Journal.

Collage Street Art Residency: New Orleans

Early Deadline: Sunday, 31 March 2024
Final Deadline: Sunday, 28 April 2024

A week-long, in-person residency that coincides with Kolaj Fest New Orleans (12-16 June 2024), during which artists will explore the city, learn about the history and materials of street art, and make artwork for public display that Kolaj Fest attendees and New Orleanians will be able to view.

Collage Artist Residency: Scotland

Next Deadline: Sunday, 26 May 2024.

Kolaj Institute is partnering with A’ the Airts and the Nithsdale Hotel in Sanquhar, Scotland to offer week-long residencies for collage artists in Spring and Fall 2024. The 2024 residencies focus on Castles as Buildings, Metaphors, & Systems of Power.

Call for Submissions: PoetryXCollage

Submissions are reviewed on an ongoing basis

PoetryXCollage is a printed journal of artwork and writing that operates at the intersection of poetry and collage. Artists and writers interested in submitting should prepare 3-5 page spreads for consideration. Page spreads must conform to exact specifications and include a general artist narrative and a short page spread narrative. 

Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2024

Kolaj Fest returns to New Orleans on 12-16 June 2024 for a coming together of collage artists and art professionals; a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society; where the focus is how we celebrate and elevate the status of collage. Presenters will lead panel discussions and explore key curatorial issues. Artists will exhibit artwork, and create special activities and demonstrations. We will meet, network, share community, camaraderie, and fellowship. We will leave armed with new ideas for our artmaking, writing, and curatorial projects, but more importantly, we will leave Kolaj Fest New Orleans prepared to champion this artform in the year to come.

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NEW JOURNAL

PoetryXCollage

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.

Learn MoreGet Volume Five Now

Kolaj 39

Current Issue of the Print Magazine

In the issue Editorial, “To Take Joy in the Joy of Others,” Ric Kasini Kadour asks how does one stay optimistic “in the face of a world that is increasingly divisive and at odds with itself. How do we stay positive and move forward when the world feels like it’s turning into a steaming pile of ….?” Helen Hartmann profiles Dutch Artist Anna van der Putte in “Cherishing the Beauty of Ephemeral Objects.” van der Putte’s assemblage, Yellow Stare Down, is on the cover. In “Migrating Forces,” Steve Bridgeman writes about how Charulata Prasada uses collage to explore culture, gender, and self. “Preservation Stations” reports on how Mark Vargo won a grant to make a series of collage-themed public sculptures that celebrate wildlife in Northern California. “My House Too” reports on how Danielle Cole is using collage to engage youth with history. Madeline Sorel shares her experience of the Kolaj Street Krewe Residency in New Orleans in “I Came for the Street Art, I Found a Community”. Anna Innocenti reflects on “the extraordinary impact of an artist residency” in “Evolving Collage Practice”. We review The Comfort of Crows, a new book by The New York Times contributor Margaret Renkl, illustrated by collagist Billy Renkl. In “Where Words Cannot,” Elizabeth Hazard considers S. Korey Steckle’s self expression through collage. Through artist portfolios, we journey to California, Iowa, Oregon, Virginia and Spain. We hope each issue of Kolaj Magazine takes you someplace you’ve never been.

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NEW PUBLICATION

Collage Saves The World

We are living in an explosively political time, faced with crises that are not only deepening individually, but becoming increasingly intersectional in relation to each other. There is a strong history of collage art being used to tackle complex socio-political issues during some of the most difficult eras, but how can it meet this moment and spark meaningful dialogues about our varied, contemporary issues? In November 2022, G. E. Vogt led twelve artists in a month-long virtual residency with the goal of creating work that examines complex socio-political issues that contemporary society is contending with, in order to spark meaningful dialogue and inspire deeper engagement. Each artist chose specific issues to explore through the medium of collage. Their artwork allows viewers an opportunity to reflect on various forms of racism, colorism, ableism, and sexism; the war in Ukraine; climate change and the importance of permaculture; beauty standards and women’s autonomy. Their work makes its way into the world in this book and as a traveling exhibition.

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NEW PUBLICATION

The Awakening

by Kate Chopin, illustrated & interpreted by contemporary collage artists

The Awakening focuses on Edna Pontellier, an upper-class New Orleans woman, torn between expectations and desires. In the beginning of the novel Edna appears to live in a semi-conscious state, trapped in the mundane aspects of her life. As the story evolves, she encounters new people and experiences that create an awakening shift within her. Edna begins to view her world differently, and through this lens new relationships emerge while others become strained. In the end, Edna realizes that even if she has her own desires she is still trapped by her societal role.

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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.

Kolaj Institute works in partnership with Kolaj Magazine to communicate, market, promote, publish, and distribute the work of the Institute. Kolaj Institute is the recipient of Kolaj Magazine‘s archives and collections.

Kolaj Institute is decentralized and works in partnership with a number of art venues and other organizations around the world to manifest its programs.

Publications from Kolaj Institute

Consider this: The book, not the gallery, may be the best place to experience collage. This sentiment has broad implications for how collage artists work and how their work is received by an art world whose orientation is decidedly fixed on the gallery wall. Can the book provide the functions that the exhibition has historically provided to artists? Unlike an exhibition where original work is on display, a book depends on reproduction for its distribution. Will the public accept a book as an experience of artwork or even as an object of art in and of itself? And if we accept the book as being on par with the exhibition, how does that affect how we think of the history of art publishing that has come before?

Kolaj Institute works with Kasini House to publish books that document and diffuse ideas that deepen our understanding of collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century movement. Books are often the outcome of residencies, fellowships, and other projects.

What’s New In Collage

Standard Processes in Dressmaking

NEW BOOK FROM KOLAJ Standard Processes in Dressmaking The book will debut at the Borders Textile Towerhouse in Hawick, Scotland on 13 April 2024 in conjunction with the exhibition, “Graphic… [...]

Call to Artists: Poetry & Collage Residency 2024

Poetry & Collage Residency 2024 A four-week, virtual/online residency with Kolaj Institute in May 2024 Early deadline to apply: Sunday, 7 April 2024Final deadline to apply: Sunday, 21 April 2024Submit… [...]

Photography & Collage Artist Residency

CALL TO ARTISTS Photography & Collage Artist Residency A five-day, in-person collage artist residency in New Orleans Virtual Session: Monday, 6 May 2024, 4-6PM EDT  In Person: 10AM on Monday,… [...]

Call to Artists: Collage in Practice Workshop April/May 2024

CALL TO ARTISTS Collage in Practice A four-week, virtual/online workshop with Kolaj Institute in April & May 2024 Early deadline to apply: Sunday, 31 March 2024 Final deadline to apply:… [...]

Call to Artists: Collage as Street Art Residency – New Orleans 2024

Collage as Street Art Residency – New Orleans 2024 9-16 June 2024, New Orleans A week-long, in-person residency that coincides with Kolaj Fest New Orleans (12-16 June 2024), during which… [...]