PROJECT OVERVIEW

Place as Archive takes as its premise that the landscape can be viewed as a sort of archive from which artists can draw, not unlike a material archive maintained in an institutional collection. When artists approach a place as an archive, they draw out a deeper, more complex understanding of that place that enriches our understanding of our communities, helps us be better citizens, and empowers us to take better care of our neighbors. Place as Archive intersects with other Kolaj Institute Projects around photography, folklore, trash as material, street art, and history.

To see the Place as Archive is to consider all the things that make up that place as holding a story. The shape of a building may speak to past economics. Trash on the ground may tell us what people are eating or how they feel about their community. Graffiti, Street Art, and signage become part of the public discourse. The shape of streets and sidewalks; the shape and placement of parks or green space; the markings on bricks or manhole covers; all of these things point to complex human systems of place making and belonging. Be they grand or mundane, they are opportunities for artists to tell us something about the world we live in.

In The Lure of the Local, Lucy Lippard writes about the fragmented nature of contemporary life. “Most of us live such fragmented lives and have so many minicommunities that no one knows us as a whole. The incomplete self longs for the fragments to be brought together. This can’t be done without a context, a place.” Collage is the work of bringing fragments together into a whole. When artists approach a place as an archive, they draw out a deeper, more complex understanding of that place that enriches our understanding of our communities, helps us be better citizens, and empowers us to take better care of our neighbors.

The project manifests as artist residencies; articles in Kolaj Magazine; programs at Kolaj Fest New Orleans and Kolaj LIVE Online; publications; and exhibitions.

SEE PAST PROJECTS

CALL TO ARTISTS

Montreal: City as Archive Collage Artist Lab

Tuesday, 28 July to Sunday, 2 August 2026. Early Deadline: 14 June 2026. Montreal: City as Archive Collage Artist Lab is a five-day intensive where collage artists use Place as a laboratory and spend a week making artwork; learning about the city, its people, and its history; and discussing how art can capture, share, reflect, comment, and otherwise engage with a sense of place. LEARN MORE

APRIL-JUNE 2023
EXHIBITION

Passing Place

At MERZ Gallery, Sanquhar, Scotland, 1 April-15 May, and at Kolaj Institute Gallery at The School Art Studios, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 5-30 June 2023.  In the exhibition, “Passing Place”, a cohort of forty International Collage Artists reflected on Sanquhar as Place. The rural Scottish town became a laboratory for exploring this idea of place and its elements and developing a practice of incorporating those elements into artwork so that others may engage, reflect, and consider what Sanquhar was, is, and can become in the 21st century. LEARN MORE

SEPTEMBER 2023
RESIDENCY

Scotland Collage Artist Residency: Fall

When artists approach a place as an archive, they draw out a deeper, more complex understanding of that place that enriches our understanding of our communities, helps us be better citizens, and empowers us to take better care of our neighbors. Using the rural community of Sanquhar, Scotland as a laboratory, twenty-seven international artists spent a week in September 2023 making artwork with the goal of developing an individual methodology for responding to place in one’s art practice and to make a work of art about Sanquhar that speaks to and about the people and land. Participating artists: Lucia F Banderas (London, England, United Kingdom) | Carmen Bubar (Tucson, Arizona, USA) | Anna Chupa (Easton, Pennsylvania, USA) | Megan Clegg (Brooklyn, New York, USA) | Denise Clemen (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) | Florence de Schlichting (London, England, United Kingdom) | Anya Epie (London, England, United Kingdom) | Lindsey Friman (Alameda, California, USA) | Maddie George (Austin, Texas, USA) | Ali (Al Shaikh) Hasan (Sitra, Bahrain) | Christopher Holler (Winter Park, Florida, USA) | Jamie Hughes (New Orleans, Louisiana, USA) | Christine Karapetian (Jackson Heights, New York, USA) | Mary Elizabeth Kimbrough (Mobile, Alabama, USA) | Carol M Lynch (Metairie, Louisiana, USA) | Summer McCroskey (Brooklyn, New York, USA) | Sadia Mir (Doha, Qatar) | Grace Patterson (Berkeley, California, USA) | Chasity Porter (Missouri City, Texas, USA) | Dean Reynolds (London, England, United Kingdom) | Leanne Rockliff (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) | Christian Rodriguez (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) | Anthony Smith, Jr. (Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA) | Amy Stout (Missoula, Montana, USA) | Marian Tagliarino (Saint Petersburg, Florida, USA) | Maria Weiss (San Francisco, California, USA) | Cedric Wilson (New York, New York, USA) LEARN MORE

Image: This Way to Sanquhar by Chasity Porter. 14″x11″; paper, artist photography, coffee, digital images, on vellum Bristol paper; 2023

AUGUST 2026
CALL TO ARTISTS

Is This Your Chicken?

An occasional post makes its way onto New Orleans online message boards that asks, Is This Your Chicken?, and while that may not be unique to New Orleans, something about the prevalence of wild poultry in the city is uniquely New Orleans. In this city, we embrace absurdity; we celebrate the irrational; we revel in the surreal…all qualities one regularly finds in collage. Kolaj Institute seeks collage artwork from artists living and working in the greater New Orleans area. (Our aim is not to gatekeep but to represent collage from our corner of the world. We will consider you even if you live in Houma; don’t be shy.) We are looking for larger works and groupings of smaller works. We take a broad view of collage and will consider analogue collage, assemblage, quilting, fabric sculpture, photomontage, digital collage, décollage, etc. At Kolaj Institute, we don’t define collage, rather, we ask, How is this artwork a collage? If you have an answer to that question, you should be set. The artwork need not show a chicken, rather we are interested in artwork that expresses New Orleans as a people, place and culture. The exhibition will take place at Kolaj Institute Gallery in August & September 2026. Complete details coming soon.  SEND EMAIL FOR DETAILS 

JUNE 2024
EXHIBITION

S&WBNO Billing Issues: Collage by New Orleans Artists

at Second Story Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 8 June-6 July 2024. The title of the exhibition, “Sewage & Water Board Billing Issues,” describes an almost universal experience of New Orleanians, something we fear, something we contend with, something we like to complain about. On view was artwork by collage artists who live in or around New Orleans. Collage, like New Orleans, which often plays with the absurdity of life, nonsense, frivolity, and fun, can also take on serious issues and help us make sense of a fragmented world. Artists featured: Bernadette Birzer, Bethanie Mangigian, Brent Houzenga, Carol Lynch, Caroline Alterman, Carrie Beene, Cassie Tarr, Christopher Kurtz, Emre Karaoglu, Jamie Amdal Hughes, Jill Stoll, Kelly Mueller, Kevin Comarda, Leanne Jaffe, Michael Pajón, Moira Crone, Nonney Oddlokken, Re Howse, Ric Kasini Kadour, Robbie Morgan, and Roxanne Rudov. LEARN MORE

AUGUST 2022
EXHIBITION

And a River Runs Through It…

In “Many Americas: Art Meets History” at the Wilson Museum at the Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester, Vermont, August to November 2022. In March 2022, Kolaj Institute invited a group of artists to explore the archives and exhibitions of The Historic New Orleans Collection and to make a collaborative collage that offered the viewer a sense of New Orleans. Composed as a river making its way through its geography, the collage weaves a number of elements into a single artwork. LEARN MORE

NOVEMBER 2022
TALK & SLIDESHOW

The City as Archive

Artist, writer, and culture worker Ric Kasini Kadour spoke about the city as an archive and the various approaches artists use to reflect a sense of place in their artwork at the Milton H. Latter Memorial Library. He wrote, “New Orleans’ complex histories make the city an exceptionally fertile place for artists and its unresolved conflicts and impending threats make such work one of urgency.” LEARN MORE

NOVEMBER 2022
ARTIST LAB

New Orleans Collage Artist Lab: City as Archive

New Orleans Collage Artist Lab: City as Archive in November 2022 was a five-day intensive of workshops, discussions, and collage making designed to foster the integration of history and place into a collage artist’s practice. The Lab took as its premise that the urban landscape can be viewed as a sort of archive with which artists can draw from, not unlike a material archive maintained by an institution. During this Lab, artists toured New Orleans with an artist lens and developed strategies for drawing from the city material for their art making. Morning presentations were followed by afternoons of collage making. Artists explored working big by collaborating on a large-scale three-dimensional collage sculpture that debuted at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, 7-11 June 2023. Participating artists: Aisha Shillingford (Brooklyn, New York, USA) | Grace Dunbar (Portland, Oregon, USA) | Nadia McKinney (Brooklyn, New York, USA) | Patricia Doucet (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) | S. Erin Batiste (Brooklyn, New York, USA) | Shavawn Simmons (Morrow, Georgia, USA) | Yanira Matienzo (Mexico City, Mexico) LEARN MORE

Artists in the Archives: Community, History, & Collage

2 September 2022-7 January 2023 at the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Stewart-Swift Research Center, the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History invited an international network of collage artists to engage with historic material in the archive and to create a folio of collage prints that reflect on the idea of community in a 21st century world. The prints were on exhibition at the Museum from 2 September 2022 to 26 August 2023 and the subject of a book published by Kolaj Institute. Under the curatorial direction of Kolaj Institute Director Ric Kasini Kadour and with the support of Stewart-Swift Research Center Archivist Eva Garcelon-Hart and Henry Sheldon Museum Collections Associate Taylor Rossini, the Museum engaged with twenty-three artists from seven countries to make twenty-four collage prints referencing history material in the collection. LEARN MORE