Registration

With your registration for Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2026, you have access to all sessions and activities, as well as the printed program guide for the event. You also receive  access to collage making and workshop spaces.

Registration: $175 

AT KOLAJ FEST

Symposium

The program at Kolaj Fest is a unique experience. We have multiple goals and are serving multiple audiences: We aim to breakdown hierarchy and foster dialogue among art professionals working in a variety of capacities. We aim to build bridges between the collage community and the larger art world; between the art world and the general public. SEE THE PROGRAMS

AT KOLAJ FEST

Workshops

Workshops at Kolaj Fest New Orleans offer participants the opportunity to engage with their process or materials in a new way; explore subjects or themes; or practice a new collage technique to make. Over a dozen workshops take place during the festival. SEE THE WORKSHOPS

AT KOLAJ FEST

Special Projects

Projects at Kolaj Fest New Orleans are activities that unfold over the course of the festival and often lead to exhibitions or publications that take place after the event. While led by an artist or group of artists, projects are often open to collaboration from Kolaj Fest Participants.

AT KOLAJ FEST

Collage Making 

Collage making takes place each day of Kolaj Fest New Orleans. In addition to free time to make collage, the space will host artists leading demonstrations and workshops. The space has scissors, X-acto knives, glue, and a collection of papers and materials. Collage making also takes place during Workshops .

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

Welcome Reception

Wednesday, 10 June 2026, 3-5PM 

Join us for a peripatetic Welcome Reception in the heart of the St. Roch neighborhood, just across St. Claude Avenue from Kolaj Institute Gallery. 

THURSDAY EVENING

Collage on Screen

Thursday, 11 June 2026, 7-9PM
Cafe Istanbul

Collage on Screen, an eclectic evening of moving images, is part of Kolaj Institute’s Collage in Motion project, which explores collage and the moving image, a broad, loosely defined category that includes animations, film cut-ups, collage film, stop-motion, documentaries about collage artists, and other forms of media in which collage—as medium or genre—is present. The program features curated selection of short films and work made by Kolaj Institute’s Collage on Screen Artist Residents. This event is open to the public. Admission is $10. (Free for those registered for Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2026.)

WORKSHOP

Collage the Tarot: Kolaj Fest New Orleans Edition

Wednesday, 10 June 2026, 7-9PM
Cafe Istanbul

Since September 2025, New Orleans, Louisiana collage artist and clinical social worker Bethanie Mangigian has led the popular workshop series, Collage the Tarot, at Kolaj Institute Gallery. Participants explore the rich imagery of the tarot through intuitive collage-making. Each session invites participants to pull a card (bring a deck or use one of ours), reflect on its meaning, and set a personal intention. From there, participants will create an original collage inspired by the symbols, themes, and messages that arise. “I am passionate about gathering people—artists and non-artists alike—to create together,” wrote Mangigian. “The act of making becomes an odyssey we travel together.” The workshop “is a space to slow down, connect with inner wisdom, play, and express creativity.” No experience with tarot or collage is needed, and participants are invited to bring a notebook if they’d like to journal as part of this practice All materials are provided, and gentle guidance is offered throughout. Participants will leave with a piece of art that reflects their journey.

This event is free for those registered for Kolaj Fest New Orleans. Pre-registration is required.

SUNDAY MORNING

Great Collage Swap

Sunday, 14 June 2026, 10:30AM
LeMieux Galleries

On Sunday, we will gather one final time to say our goodbyes and to conduct The Great Collage Swap. To participate, bring a collage to exchange to the Info Table before 10AM Sunday. In return, you will be given a number. All of the collages will be displayed. During the program, a collage will be selected and matched with a number and the holder of that number will receive the collage. As the collages are matched, each artist has a chance to share their story. The Great Collage Swap takes place at LeMieux Galleries on Julia Street, the site of the “Bird on a Wire” exhibition. LEARN MORE

COLLAGE ON VIEW

Bird on a Wire

at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 21 May-14 June 2026. The idiom, “Bird on a Wire,” speaks to the tension between freedom and vulnerability, a precarious state of existence where at any moment one could fly or fall. Leonard Cohen’s 1968 song is an apology, a prayer, and an anthem. He sings, “I have tried in my way to be free.” The idiom also speaks to what it feels like to be an artist; constantly on the verge of success or failure, balancing security with unpredictability. The idiom also speaks to this historical moment where society itself feels precarious or to quote Cohen’s song, we are all “like a worm on a hook.” With this in mind, we invited registered participants of Kolaj Fest New Orleans to submit to an exhibition that will take place at LeMieux Galleries during the festival. MORE

DAILY CONGRESS THURSDAY

Welcome to Kolaj Fest

Thursday, 11 June 2026, 10:15AM
New Orleans Museum of Art

Kolaj Institute Director Ric Kasini Kadour will officially open Kolaj Fest New Orleans at Thursday’s Daily Collage Congress and hear from a number of artists about projects, activities, and exhibitions taking place during the festival. Artists will be invited to contribute to the Great Collage Swap taking place on Sunday. Thursday’s Congress is the primary orientation to Kolaj Fest New Orleans. Nikola Janevski (image above) will present “New Orleans-Magic and Protection”, a collection of collage shirts made in collaboration with New Orleans artists during his Solo Residency at Kolaj Institute. In the series, the jacket becomes the substrate. “Each piece is about exploring some aspects of identity,” said Janevski. “The series is inspired by the art and culture of New Orleans working with people that are from New Orleans or live here.” At Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2025, Janevski debuted “Reveries: Fragments of Identity,” a collection of collaged shirts made in collaboration with Andrea Burgay. During a December 2025 Solo Residency at the Kolaj Institute, Janevski worked with New Orleans artists LaVonna Varnado Brown, Cindy Green, Christopher Kurts, Chachi Lewis, and Michael Pajon to make the new series, which will debut as a fashion show during Thursday’s Daily Collage Congress. LEARN MORE

DAILY CONGRESS FRIDAY

Being an Artist in the World: Contemporary Art Projects

Friday, 12 June 2026, 10AM
Cafe Istanbul

As artists, we love to make. We love play and research and process. But then what? A major focus of Kolaj Institute’s Artist Development program concerns how we put our art out into the world. As collage artists, we have the added burden of moving our work through an ecosystem that may neither understand or appreciate what we are doing. The ongoing bifurcation of the Art Market and the collapse of mid-tier galleries that served as a bridge between spaces for emerging artists and the blue chip market adds to the struggle. During Friday’s Daily Collage Congress, Ric Kasini Kadour will share his thoughts on how thinking about one’s art making as a multifaceted contemporary art project can open doors to communities and institutions that are critical to getting one’s art out in the world. Cyndi Coon and Kim Larkin will introduce their book project, We Choose the Bear, that “uses collage to hold complexity, contradiction, humor, and grief, and to turn those fragments into something shareable.” Now published, We Choose The Bear is taking on life as a participatory practice, “one that invites others to remix, respond, and carry the conversation forward.” Valeri Clark will speak about her Flag Collages. Based in Washington DC, transgender, non-binary, and intersex collage artist, herbalist, and occultist Jul Drake will share their practice of engaging with their Irish-American and queer identities to explore and excavate duality and shadow. Columbus, Ohio artist Emily Morgan will share how her collage practice led her to curate “Pulp Stiction: Collage As an Act of Resistance,” an ambitious exhibition that will open at the end of 2026 with a series of workshops and panels. LEARN MORE

SYMPOSIUM AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS

Consumerism, Context, and Action: Politics & Collage

Collage as a political art form has a particular relevance to today as well as a strong historical context. From its roots in the European anti-fascist and Russian revolutionary movements in the early 20th century to its expressions during the U.S. Civil Rights era to its current manifestations in the fight for social justice in South America, collage is used by artists around the world as an impetus for social and political change. During this panel, we will hear from three artists who are engaged in this work. New Orleans artist Carmen Alcocer will present art work that speaks to “pitfalls of an over-consuming modern age.” Based in Paris, Texas, Ginger Sisco Cook is an analog political collagist working on a four-year project to contextualize the Second Trump Administration by “combining vintage imagery with contemporary media to offer commentary on current political issues.” Fusing collage, filmmaking, installation, and layered soundscapes, New Orleans Angela Lynn Tucker will speak about her film, The Inquisitor, that uses historical footage, contemporary interviews, and collage to share the life and legacy of Barbara Jordan and the collage project, “More is Required,” a participatory, traveling initiative. LEARN MORE

SYMPOSIUM AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS

Art on the Body: Fashion & Collage

Fashion and collage seem to dance around each other. Visual artists draw from fashion magazines and as the American Academy of Fashion Design noted, “Designers have used fashion collages for years, and the technique can have a greater visual impact than a simple photograph or drawing.” Then a whole category of wearable art enters the room with mixed materials, fragmented embellishment, and juxtaposed design languages. In this panel, we will hear from three artists who are each dancing around fashion and collage. A former art gallery owner and architect, Seattle, Washington artist and curator Bill Gaylord will present “Collage and the Body: Artwear.” He wrote, “Adorning the body in a three-dimensional moving canvas for artful expression has many origins of human needs: protection, social identity, display of status, ritual and spirituality, politics and power, and human attraction, beauty and sexuality.” Based in Lafayette, Louisiana, New Orleans-born artist and educator Michael Eble recently inherited a collection of vintage ties, sparking a deeper investigation into traditional men’s fashion. This prompted him to consider the act of dressing as a form of collage, where the arrangement of ties, dress shirts, and jackets mirrors the compositional relationships found in his artwork. Eble will share insights from this ongoing research and discuss how these ideas are informing new directions in his studio practice. Boston, Massachusetts artist Nikola Janevski will speak about his new collaborative, fashion collage series, “New Orleans-Magic and Protection” which will debut at Kolaj Fest New Orleans. LEARN MORE

SYMPOSIUM AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS

We Are All Collaborators In Someone Else’s Journey: Robert Rauschenberg & Process

Robert Rauschenberg is recognized as the greatest collaborator of any major American artist. He fundamentally redefined art as a collective encounter rather than a solitary act. His philosophy that “ideas are not real estate” allowed him to share credit and creative space in a way that was revolutionary for the typically individualistic American art world. During this presentation, Carolyn E. Oliver (Carlsbad, California) and Robin Sanford Roberts (San Diego, California) will present an overview of Rauschenberg’s life, work, and process. Oliver will share her experience with fashion designer Jason Wu, whose 2026 Spring/Summer Fashion Show at the Brooklyn Navy Yard paid homage to Rauschenberg. Set designer and professor Roberts will share views of her theatrical set designs inspired by Rauschenberg.

SYMPOSIUM AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS

Autochthonous Cities, Anthropology, & Unfamiliarity: Collage Theory & Practice

On this panel, we will hear from three speakers, each with a unique take on collage theory and practice. Bucharest, Romania artist and educator Livia Marinescu will speak about her collage series, “The Third”, and the third space collage makes and her paper, “Between Recognition and Uncertainty: Collage as an Evocative Practice.” Durango, Colorado artist and professor Chad Colby will speak about the role of collage in his teaching and artist practices and a forthcoming chapter in Why Collage? Anthropology and Art in a Fragmented World (edited by Cathy Greenhalgh and Susan Falls) titled “Beyond Dada: Indigenous Reclamation through Contemporary American Collage.” Portland, Oregon collagist Clive Knights will speak about his series, “Autochthonous Cities,” as a reflection on the contemporary city. The collages are “the result of a kind of stewardship; intimations of newly born landscapes and settlements as they emerge from the detritus of print media produced by civil society.” LEARN MORE

WORKSHOP

Eat Your Heart Out

Based in Washington DC, Jul Drake is a transgender, non-binary, and intersex collage artist, herbalist, and occultist. Using their 48″x48″ collage, Eat Your Heart Out, as a stepping off point, Drake will share their practice of engaging with their Irish-American and queer identities to explore and excavate duality and shadow. Their wax “Spell Collages” “are each a magickal ritual I perform under a full moon. I harness that energy and direct it towards community protection, healing, and liberation. I do not manipulate the wax with my hands, instead using words, herbs and intention to channel each piece.” In this workshop, participants “will learn to be more vulnerable in their work which overflows into all areas of their life” and “better understand the hidden aspects that drive their art and maybe discover a new direction they hope to take.” Shadow work is about “confronting the parts of us we are ashamed of through collage and within a community space is spiritual and emotional alchemy,” wrote Drake. “It allows the energy to be transformed so we can overcome these fears and reconnect with our most authentic selves.” Through collage making and discussion, participants will explore how to excavate their own shadow through visual storytelling and consider the role of shame, personal history, lineage, and joy in that work. LEARN MORE

WORKSHOP

New Orleans Wooden Postcards

New Orleans is offbeat, unusual, vibrant, and alive–all part of the gumbo that has simmered for 300 years in Spanish, French, Caribbean, African, Cajun and Southern ingredients to form a five-star, cultural repast. Ellis Marsalis, jazz pianist, once said, “In New Orleans, culture doesn’t come down from on high, it bubbles up from the streets.” It is a most colorful city: from the architecture to the historic cemeteries to the unforgettable food to the street musicians, performers, and visual artists. Each sunrise and sunset creates an unforgettable moment. Even the trash is ephemera for the creative collagist.  Lead by collagist Carol M. Lynch, participants in this workshop will create an original 4”x6” wooden postcard, suitable for mailing, that explores their relationship between the New Orleans spaces and their emotions, using analog collage techniques to evoke a sense of connection and reflection on their time spent at Kolaj Fest New Orleans. After a brief introduction and demonstration of technique, participants will be provided with printed pictures of New Orleans and New Orleans-based literature that contain pictures, symbols and words. Once complete, the postcards will be sealed. Participants may also wish to bring their own pictures or other paper memoirs to the workshop, such as ticket stubs, a small piece of a found paper object, or a picture they took which they printed out.

WORKSHOP

Prompt Means to Make Something Happen

“Creative practice is a series of tiny decisions that may seem insignificant, but, like a human or pet relationship, repetition leads to devotion. The seemingly banal elements of a practice can lead to sublime acts of resistance and revolution.” In this workshop, Portland, Oregon writer and artist Kirk Read read will guide participants through a series of writing and collage prompts. “The practice is not about creating finished works but practicing tools as part of a daily practice that uses words and images in relationship to one another to expose the hidden and shy parts of our psyches.” Read will speak about icebreaking, visual and written listmaking and creating a visual glossary of obsessions. Participants are encouraged to bring their journals or sketchbooks but paper and pens will be provided.

WORKSHOP

A Fan of Collage: The Fan as Page & Substrate

Inspired by poet and collage artist Alice Notley (1945-2025), Trish Crapo has been making collage fans for over a decade. Notley, author of forty books of poetry, began working in collage in the 1970s. In an article in the journal Poetry, she wrote, “I started making collages because other poets were and they weren’t that good at it, really.” The skills and materials of collage, she continued, “…seemed available to anyone, and the form, with the addition of a few cut-out words, felt almost like that of a poem.” While she made many rectangular collages, often on cardboard from boxes people sent to her, Notley became enamored of fans—mostly semicircular, but sometimes round—as substrates for her work. In this workshop, Trish Crapo presents some of Notley’s thoughts on how the fan affected her sense of composition, and how the act of collaging interacted with the act of writing poetry. In addition, Crapo will show some of her own collage fans, inspired by Notley’s work, and talk about her experience—as both a poet and a collage artist—working with this medium. Crapo wrote, “It’s fair to say that I started making collage fans because Alice Notley was, and she was really good at it.” Participants will try their hand at working with a folding paper fan as a substrate for collage. She will share tips, as well as informally display some of her fans as examples. “Supplies will be provided, but feel free to bring along any supplies, including small trinkets, beads, etc., that are of personal significance to you (or just intrigue you). Mostly, we’ll have fun.”

WORKSHOP

We Choose The Bear

During this workshop, participants will explore using collage as a tool for social justice storytelling, grounded in the themes and visual language of the book, We Choose The Bear. The work of futurists and collage artists Cyndi Coon and Kim Larkin sits within a long lineage of collage as protest and resistance, from Dada and feminist art movements to contemporary activist zines and digital remix culture. Drawing from the book’s collages, poetry, and storytelling, participants will explore how cultural narratives, fear, power, and protection are constructed and challenged. The session invites participants into an active dialogue around why many women and marginalized people express feeling safer choosing a bear over a man in the woods. The workshop treats collage not just as an art form, but as an accessible activist method for sensemaking, expression, and collective meaning-making. Participants will consider how collage has historically functioned as a low-barrier, high-impact tool for social justice storytelling and movement-building and how to translate complex emotional and political ideas into clear, visual messages and activate them through reproduction and circulation to spark conversation, visibility, and engagement. During the workshop, attendees will create a social-activism collage that tells a personal or collective story using both found materials and provided prompts from We Choose The Bear. Participants will leave with both a physical artifact and a deeper understanding of collage as a catalyst for conversation and visibility. LEARN MORE

WORKSHOP

Small-Scale Storytelling

Robin Sanford Roberts is “drawn to the beauty of what has been left behind,” She wrote, “Old books, objects, and fragments of ephemera captivate me, not only for their textures and histories, but for the stories they hold.” In the workshop, Small-Scale Storytelling, she invites participants to “step into the world of storytelling as we transform simple tin boxes into intimate works of art.” Participants will create a collage or assemblage inside a small tin container using a variety of vintage and contemporary papers and small found objects. Participants will learn about composition, layering, and the art of creating meaning within a small space. Roberts will invite participants to consider the container–whether working on the interior, the exterior, or both–and speak about strategies for making compositions in a limited but dimensional format .

WORKSHOP

Stop-Motion Animation

Emily Denlinger‘s collage making practice. Denlinger’s collage animation, Angel Baby vs. Drone Eagle, was part of Collage on Screen program at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2024. In 2025, Denlinger worked with Kolaj Fest New Orleans attendees to create short, stop-motion animations as part of her Gain of Function project. The film made with these animations will debut at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2026. In this workshop, Denlinger will demonstrate how animation is an accessible artistic practice without a lot of tech or start-up costs. Participants will learn how to use their mobile phones, a phone tripod, and free apps to create collage stop-action animations. Working in small teams, participants will create short animations with a collage figure with movable joints.