
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Temporal Geolocation: How Place & History Form Identity in Collage
at Kolaj Institute Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
11 October-24 November 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, 12 October 2024, 6-9PM during the Second Saturday Gallery Walk
RSVP for the Opening
Paula Mans, T. Owens Union, Candace Caston, & Jeanna Penn
In Lure of the Local, Lucy Lippart wrote, “When we know where we are, we’re in a far better position to understand what other cultural groups are experiencing within a time and place we all share.” How do we temporally geolocate ourselves? How does the history of that place inform who we are in that place? How do we bring our own histories into a place that has a history of its own. North American modern life is fundamentally diasporic in nature. So many of us are from somewhere else and yet, where we are and when we are shapes who we are at any given point in time. How do we reconcile disparate identities and nurture a whole sense of self? Each of the four artists in “Temporal Geolocation” draw on history and a sense of place to make collage art that speaks to identity.
The artwork of T. Owens Union from Fairfield, Pennsylvania draws on the experience of her paternal grandmother who made patchwork quilts in Alabama and “reflects the African American cultural experience throughout history.” She wrote, “The lack of an accurate and fully realized historical understanding of this community has at times led to exclusion and invisibility in American society. I use this experience to inform a present voice for ancestors who too often were silenced and suppressed.” The quilt, she noted, “a symbol of protection and guidance in our community, is often incorporated into the art.”
Based in Washington, DC, Paula Mans creates “figurative collages that engage in visual discourse surrounding the (in)visibility and agency of people of African descent. The works subvert notions of power through the Gaze. Rather than being images to be viewed and consumed, the figures that the artist constructs look defiantly out onto the world–engaging, confronting, and challenging the viewer.” Mans’ artwork speaks to “the ways in which collage is emblematic of identity formation, specifically within the historical context of the physical and cultural formation of the African Diaspora.” She writes, “During the Transatlantic slave trade, millions of people from across West Africa were forcibly displaced from their ancestral homes. These Africans were thrown into the bellies of ships alongside fellow enslaved people with whom they did not necessarily share a common language, ethnicity, or religion. Rather than perish under the immeasurable weight of violence and degradation, enslaved Africans chose to survive–taking remnants of their identities and molding them together to form new cultures and identities in the Americas. In my practice, I use collage as a physical tool that mirrors these historical processes. Drawing from imagery of people from across the African Diaspora–I deconstruct, bond, and resignify disparate parts to assemble new faces and forms that communicate shared identities and experiences.”
Oakland, California artist Jeanna Penn uses images from archives and found historical images to tell stories of Blackness in the diaspora. Using photographs from the 1920s of a Black community in Buda, Texas that she found in an Austin antique shop, We Three Queens and Sending Love, Seeking Light from her “New Women” series celebrate “the clothes, houses and cars [that] spoke of an affluent Black community that no longer exists.” The semi-abstract, monochromatic collage in the series “This Is America” invite us to consider what has and hasn’t changed in the history of Black life in the country.
Candace Caston is a collagist from New Orleans, Louisiana who was displaced to Decatur, Georgia as a young girl after Hurricane Katrina. In April 2024, while an artist-in-residence at Kolaj Institute, she made a visual archive of the city that she used to make collage that explores memory and place. The work is infused with parts of her family’s story and with her memories attached to New Orleans. She wrote, “Depicting numinous scenes of everyday life, my work is an archive of remembered locations. I recall and record segments of the home, vehicle, and surrounding areas, drawing references from my present-day environment, dreams, and memories of my childhood home in New Orleans. In recalling these scenes I find the spaces that shelter us are embedded with our personal stories. Moments are encapsulated into our environments become a reflection of our individual cosmologies.”
“To understand ourselves better, we need to think about place and time. Our humanity is shaped by the place we find ourselves and our time in history,” said curator Ric Kasini Kadour. “The medium of collage allows artists to transcend time and geography and to put disparate fragments in conversation with one another.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS

30″x30″; mixed media collage on wood panel; 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Paula Mans is a painter, collagist, and art educator based in Washington, DC. While Paula is a native Washingtonian, she spent many of her formative years living in Tanzania, Mozambique, Eswatini, and Brazil. Her experiences throughout the African Diaspora shaped her identity and informed the development of her artistic voice. Mans’ work has been curated into group shows in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Atlanta, New York and Kranj, Slovenia. Her work has been featured in the Washington City Paper, Contemporary Collage Magazine, Suboart Magazine, CanvasRebel Magazine and on WTTG (Fox) in Washington, DC. Mans is a 2023 Sustainable Arts Foundation grantee, a Vermont Studio Center Visual Arts Fellow, and a recipient of the 2024 Arts and Humanities Fellowship for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her work has recently been acquired by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art Bank collection. Learn more at www.paulamans.art.

triptych: 18″x14″ each panel; direct print on Aluminum Dibond; 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
T. Owens Union is a career scientist who recently earned an AAS degree in Fashion Marketing from Parsons School of Design (The New School). At Parsons, she was drawn to the visual arts-oriented courses including fashion illustration, drawing, color theory, graphic design, computer assisted design (CAD), and digital layout. She has shown her work in group shows around the US, winning 2nd place at Sulfur Studios in Savannah, Georgia; 3rd place at the Pablo Center at the Confluence in Eau Claire, Wisconsin; and the Black Lives Matter Award as part of the “FL3TCH3R” exhibit at the Reese Museum in Johnson City, Tennessee. Her Sulfur Studios award included an artist profile in IMPACT Magazine. The artist lives and works in rural, South Central Pennsylvania. Learn more at www.owensunion.com.

24″x18″; collage on canvas; 2019. Courtesy of the artist.
Candace Caston is a collagist originating from New Orleans, Louisiana, currently residing in Atlanta, Georgia where she earned her BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. In her work, she uses primarily paper, and water-based media to explore the memory of place highlighting her family’s story and memories attached to New Orleans. Candace’s work was published in the Summer 2024 issue of Oxford American magazine; and she has most recently exhibited at Tennessee Gallery, The Atlanta Contemporary, The Goat Farm, UTA Artist Space, and the CICA Museum in South Korea. Learn more at www.candacecaston.com.

8″x12″; watercolor, India ink, acrylic, sourced imagery on watercolor paper; 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Jeanna Penn is a contemporary artist who lives and works between Oakland and Los Angeles, California. She has been creating art for over twenty-five years in various forms including mixed media collage, soft sculpture, photography, zines and documentary film. Much of Jeanna’s work is centered around recontextualizing found imagery and documenting material histories. She received her BA in African American Studies from Morgan State University and continued graduate work in African History at Howard University and Historical Documentary Filmmaking at George Washington University. Jeanna’s work has been shown at the Arts Guild of Sonoma; The Art Cave in Santa Cruz; The Barrett Art Center; Eyelevel Centre; Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery; Delaplaine Arts Center; Smith Gallery of Yale Divinity School; 516 Arts & the Henry Sheldon Museum. Her work has been featured in Create Magazine, Albuquerque Journal, Kolaj Magazine & Hyperallergic. In addition to several private collections, Jeanna’s work is also a part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. Learn more on Instagram @jinamae.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Ric Kasini Kadour, a 2021 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellow, is a writer, artist, publisher, and cultural worker. Working with the Vermont Arts Council, Kadour curated four exhibits: “Connection: The Art of Coming Together” (2017) and Vermont Artists to Watch 2018, 2019 and 2020. In 2017, he curated “The Art of Winter” at S.P.A.C.E. Gallery in Burlington, Vermont. In 2018, Kadour curated “Revolutionary Paths: Critical Issues in Collage” at Antenna Gallery in New Orleans, which bought together collage artists whose work represents the potential for deeper inquiry and further curatorial exploration of the medium; followed in 2019 by “Cultural Deconstructions: Critical Issues in Collage” at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans, which furthered the conversation; and “Amuse Bouche”, also at LeMieux Galleries in 2023. Since 2018, he has produced Kolaj Fest New Orleans, a multi-day festival & symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society. As Curator of Contemporary Art at Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh, Vermont in 2019 and 2020, he curated three exhibitions, “Rokeby Through the Lens” (May 19-June 16, 2019), “Structures” (August 24-October 27, 2019), and “Mending Fences: New Works by Carol MacDonald” (July 12-October 25, 2020). He also curated “Contemporary American Regionalism: Vermont Perspectives” (August 17-October 20, 2019); “Where the Sun Casts No Shadow: Postcards from the Creative Crossroads of Quito, Ecuador” (November 1-30, 2019); and “Many Americas” (August 20-November 27, 2022) in the Wilson Museum & Galleries at the Southern Vermont Arts Center. “The Money $how”, co-curated with Frank Juarez, was presented at the AIR Space Gallery at Saint Kate-The Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (April 10-September 12, 2021). For Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival in Birr, County Offaly, Ireland (August 13-20, 2021), he curated “Empty Columns Are a Place to Dream”, which traveled to the Knoxville Museum of Art in January-February 2022. At 516 ARTS in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Kadour co-curated with Alicia Inez Guzmàn two exhibitions: “Many Worlds Are Born” (February 19-May 14, 2022) and “Technologies of the Spirit” (June 11-September 3, 2022). In 2023 at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Kadour curated “Where the Sun Casts No Shadow: Postcards from the Creative Crossroads of Quito, Ecuador” (January 9-February 16, 2023) and “Mythical Landscape: Secrets of the Vale” (March 17-May 28, 2023). In September 2023, he curated “Word of Mouth: Folklore, Community and Collage” at A’ the Airts in Sanquhar, Scotland. At Kolaj Institute Gallery, he curated “Grand Opening Exhibition” (March 9-April 14, 2024), “Collage the Planet: Environmentalism in Art” (April 19-May 26, 2024), “Magic in the Modern World” (June 1-August 11, 2024), “Advanced Wound Healing Techniques: Collage by Robbie Morgan” (August 16-October 6, 2024), and “Temporal Geolocation: How Place & History Inform Identity in Collage” (October 11-November 24, 2024).
His first short film, The Covenant of Schwitters’ Army, debuted at Collage on Screen during Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2023. His second, Joy Is Paper, debuted at Collage on Screen during Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2024. Kadour is the editor and publisher of Kolaj Magazine. He has written for a number of galleries and his writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, OEI, Vermont Magazine, Seven Days, Seattle Weekly, Art New England (where he was the former Vermont editor) and many others. Kadour maintains an active art practice and his photography, collage, and sculpture have been exhibited in and are part of private collections in Australia, Europe and North America. In January-February 2020, he was artist-in-residence at MERZ Gallery in Sanquhar, Scotland. He holds a BA in Comparative Religion from the University of Vermont. Kadour splits his time between Montreal and New Orleans. Learn more at www.rickasinikadour.com.
ABOUT KOLAJ INSTITUTE GALLERY
The mission of Kolaj Institute is to support artists, curators, and writers who seek to study, document, and 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’s Gallery in New Orleans presents exhibitions and connects Kolaj Institute and the artists we work with to the vibrant St. Claude Arts District. We produce 8-10 exhibitions a year and participate in Second Saturday, the neighborhood’s monthly art walk, putting the collage art, books and exhibitions in front of New Orleanians and visitors.
INFORMATION
Kolaj Institute Gallery
Suite 230
2374 Saint Claude Avenue
New Orleans, Louisiana 70117 USA
Hours:
Thursday-Saturday, Noon-6PM
and by appointment