Cover of Radical Reimaginings Design by Suzanne Sbarge and featuring Ascending in All Directions 2 (Octopus) by Alyce Santoro. 12″x12″x.8″; vintage book pages, gouache, and ink on birch panel; 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
Radical Reimaginings
published by Maison Kasini and 516 ARTS introductory essay by Ric Kasini Kadour
Radical Reimaginings is a survey of artists working with collage who were asked to reimagine the world in response to unprecedented change taking place in the world in 2020. Forty artists from nine countries and multiple Indigenous peoples–Salish-Kootenai/Métis-Cree/Sho-Ban, Tlingit/Nisga’a, Oglala/Lakota, and Seneca Nation–offer a variety of perspectives. The voices of Black, Latinx, Native, and white Americans mingle with those from Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Canada, France, and Germany.
In the introductory essay, Ric Kasini Kadour writes, “If reimagination experts were such a thing, you would find them among collage artists. The practice, by its nature, is the act of putting two things together to make a new thing. Collage artists spend their days poring over material culture, leafing through magazines and rummaging through books, for a spark of inspiration–a element of a picture or the rendering of a thing–and then they destroy the source, cut the thing out, and stick it on something else. It is a beautiful madness, but it is effective at making new ideas. It is important magic and powerful medicine.”
page spreads of Lorna Simpson
Published as a companion to an eponymously titled exhibition presented by 516 ARTS in Albuquerque, New Mexico (22 August-31 December 2020), the book is for anyone who wants to explore how collage is uniquely suited to imagining new realities.
Artwork is accompanied by a statement in which artists describe how they want to reimagine the world. “The work of destruction, inherent to reimagination, is already taking place in social relationships, economic structures, political alliances, and communal life,” writes Kadour. “To not seize this moment and begin the work of reimagination is to give into ruination, to cede hope.”
ABOUT THE BOOK Radical Reimaginings introductory essay by Ric Kasini Kadour 96 pages; 9″x6″; glue-bound; illustrated ISBN 978-1-927587-35-5 $20 US Co-published by Maison Kasini Canada, Montreal, Quebec and 516 ARTS, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
