PROJECT OVERVIEW

Collage and modern architecture share a closely connected history. In the early twentieth century, as mass printing, photography, advertising, and illustrated magazines became increasingly accessible, artists and designers began cutting, combining, and recontextualizing printed images as a way to imagine new realities. At the same time, architects associated with modernism were embracing new materials, technologies, and spatial ideas, using photography, photomontage, drawing, and printed media to communicate buildings and material explorations. From avant-garde experiments in Europe to postwar design culture in the United States, the interplay between collage and architecture  became a tool for visualizing the modern world. 

Architecture is a cultural force that can create opportunities for some people while limiting them for others. Through their artwork, research, and public conversations, collage artists can share architectural knowledge and help people examine the systems of power that shape the places they inhabit. A building can be a vessel of history or a site of storytelling and folklore. Its use may change over time, along with what it means to the people around it. Kolaj Institute’s Architecture & Collage Project holds space for buildings recognized as cultural symbols and works of art, as well as the ordinary buildings that make up our neighborhoods.

Understanding architecture helps us ask how we want to live and what needs to change around us. Who decides what gets built, preserved, or demolished? Whose needs do those decisions serve? How might collage change the way we see our built environment and how could that understanding help us to better understand the needs of our communities and acknowledge each other’s humanity? What role could artists play in fostering appreciation of architecture in our communities?

Introduced at Kolaj Fest New Orleans in June 2026 through “Architecture as Collage, Collage as Architecture,” the project brought together Seth Ter Haar, Clive Knights, Michael Eble, and Robert Ticknor. A July 2026 Kolaj LIVE Online conversation continued the discussion with Ter Haar, Knights, and Eble. Two virtual residencies followed in August and September 2026, led by Ter Haar with guest speakers Ric Kasini Kadour and Knights. The project continues through exhibitions, publications, and public programs, with curatorial support for participating artists as their work develops.

CURATORIAL PREMISE

Central to the project is a working theory of architecture through scale which offers a shared vocabulary for talking about architecture, something we encounter and inhabit every day. In this project, we invite artists and viewers to consider eight interconnected Scales of Architecture: Neighborhood, Site or Property, Building, Room, Furniture or Body, Detail, Time, and Culture/Human Situations. Artists might examine a neighborhood, a building’s position on its lot, the arrangement of its rooms, or a detail in a piece of furniture. Time considers how places change, gather memories, and pass through different uses. Culture/Human Situations ask who lives and works there, what happens in these spaces, and whose stories they hold. Seth Ter Haar is developing this inquiry from an approach introduced to him by curator Eric Vogel during Ter Haar’s time as the 2024-2026 Fellow of Docomomo Wisconsin. By creating and exhibiting artwork, artists involved in this project contributes to the evolution of this working theory.

Image: The Witness by Renee Ferguson
12″x12″; collage on MDF; 2026. Courtesy of the artist.