RESIDENCY UPDATE

Carnival as Folklore

A five-day, in-person collage artist residency at Kolaj Institute in New Orleans

ABOUT THE RESIDENCY

Carnival is a season of celebration and symbolic renewal that takes place each year, according to the Christian liturgical calendar, between Epiphany and Mardi Gras, ending on Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, a period of solemn reflection and religious piety. During Carnival, social roles are reversed and norms are suspended; the jester becomes the king. Festivities are wide ranging and can include parades, street parties, formal balls, and cakes eaten only during that time of year. Carnival’s traditions are rooted in ancient European festivals. Its 19th-century revival in the Americas parallels a time when people were rediscovering and reveling in Greek and Roman Mythology. As such, carnival is dripping with folklore. No place does Carnival like New Orleans, where the city comes alive in a mass display of collective effervescence.

During this in-person Artist Residency, collage artists spent a week in New Orleans investigating Carnival as folklore and making art about it. Taking a broad view of collage and rooted in an understanding of Artist Practice, artists heard a working theory of folklore; what it is; how it functions in communities; and the role artists can play in activating, transmitting, and celebrating folklore in communities as a form of cultural expression and a strategy for community resilience. Artists learned how to identify and document folklore; make art in response to that folklore; build a context for the folklore; and develop strategies for getting that artwork to communities and into the larger ecosystem of Art. 

Invited artists attended one of two sessions: 

Carnival as Folklore: 25-30 January 2026

In the first session (25-30 January 2026), Carnival as Folklore, artists were invited to attend the Chewbaccus Viewing Party on 24 January and heard from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, USA-based artist Emily Denlinger about the project, Gain of Function: New Mutations/Old Traditions/Collective Effervescence. The project is a collection of locative collage photographs in an artist-created landscape inspired by global masking traditions. During her Kolaj Institute Solo Artist Residency prior to the session, Denlinger constructed a three-dimensional landscape with locally sourced trash and Carnival elements in which members of the public photographed two-dimensional collage figures. “The project functions as 21st century folklore with each character potentially representing a magical creature or masked performer in some yet-to-be-imagined ritual,” wrote Kolaj Institute Director Ric Kasini Kadour. “Like the odd, creature-like figures of early 20th century Surrealists, they, too, are a response to deeply troubled times and offer us the opportunity to find a collective effervescence to see us through them.”  

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Carol M. Lynch lives and works in Metairie, Louisiana, USA. In her sixties, Carol realizes that her life of crafting is art. She began creating collages on canvas in 2021. She is most known for her torn-paper collages of mosaic-like representational images. Since 1998, she has been heavily involved with the Mardi Gras culture of New Orleans, designing and creating costumes, headpieces, queens’ collars and trains, sequined appliques, graphic arts, centerpieces and shadow boxes to commemorate events. She served on the cast of the Louisiana Renaissance Festival for 15 years as the Garb Mistress, creating and designing garb and improvising the character of Lady Blarney. She wrote Opening Gate shows, created a tailor shoppe, and taught improvisation to the Cast. Currently she serves as a Board Member for the Joan of Arc Project. She teaches collage and Improv/Brain Games at the New Orleans People Program, a grant-based program for active seniors. She has been included in multiple exhibitions in New Orleans and has won numerous awards for her collages. She took part in the Collage Artist Residency Scotland: Folklore, Place, and Collage in September 2023. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory and www.carolmlynchartist.com.

Charulata Prasada was born in New Delhi and spent her early formative years in Kanpur, India, before moving to Montreal, Quebec. She spent her professional life working on issues of intersectionality in different developing countries, which informed her art practice both thematically and aesthetically. Between 2012 and 2015, she lived in Brooklyn, New York, where she began her exclusive focus on fine art. She returned to Canada in 2015 and now lives between Ottawa and Montreal. Prasada’s work has since been shown in group shows throughout New York City. She is represented by James Rottman Fine Art in Toronto. Steve Bridgeman wrote about her work in Kolaj 39. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory and www.charulataprasada.com.

Jennifer Evans is a textile and paper collage artist whose work explores the intersections of identity, culture, and storytelling. She majored in Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley. Evans’ work has been exhibited, and is held in private collections, across the U.S. In 2022 and 2024, while part of Kolaj Institute’s Collage Artist Residencies in Sanquhar, Scotland, she created collages and assemblages inspired by the area’s folklore. Evans has been invited to participate in artist residencies in Sanquhar, Scotland (2023, 2024), Mexico City (2025), Los Angeles (2025); and in 2026 will be a resident artist at Chateau d’Orquevaux (France) and The Icelandic Textile Center (Iceland). In 2025, her work was exhibited at Kolaj Institute’s Gallery in New Orleans; Casa Lü Sur (Mexico City); The Lincoln Center, Spark Gallery, The Collective, Core Art Space, and the Art Students League in Colorado. She is a full member of Denver’s artist-run Spark Gallery, and will have an individual exhibition in 2026. Evans’ review of Suchitra Mattai’s collages at the National Museum of Women in the Arts appeared in Kolaj 41. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory and www.thefolkloremajor.com.

Kayte Terry studied Art History at Simon’s Rock College of Bard and holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of the Arts, with additional studies at the School for International Training in Fortaleza, Brazil and at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy. Terry has been a visiting artist/lecturer at University of the Arts, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been shown in group and solo shows both in the US and abroad, notably in “Adorned: Beauty in Excess” at Joy Pratt Markham Gallery at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas and a solo show, “a rinse of excess”, at Zuckermann Museum of Art in Kennesaw, Georgia. Her collage work was published in the literary journals Peach Magazine and Cul de Sac of Blood. She’s is also a member of Little Berlin and Save the Meadows in Philadelphia. Her recent project is a podcast/collage series, “Tender Subject”, on transgressive themes: body horror/cannibalism/sexual taboos, where she’s in conversation with artists, academics and writers. She was a Kolaj Institute Solo Artist in Residence in February 2026. Learn more at www.kayteterry.com.

Folklore on Parade: 9-13 February 2026

In the second session (9-13 February 2026), Folklore on Parade, artists attended the parades of Krewes of Druids & Alla on Wednesday evening in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. Artists also visited The Historic New Orleans Collection in the French Quarter and considered the role Carnival has played in the history of New Orleans. And they visited the Backstreet Museum in the Treme. “The mission of the Backstreet Cultural Museum is to preserve and perpetuate the unique cultural traditions of New Orleans’ African American society through collections, exhibitions and publications, public programs, and performances. These cultural traditions include Mardi Gras Indians, Skull and Bone gangs, Baby Dolls, jazz funerals, social aid and pleasure clubs, and other related activities, rituals and celebrations. The vision of the Backstreet Cultural Museum is to foster the appreciation of New Orleans’ African American processional traditions as important to American history and contemporary visual culture. The Backstreet Cultural Museum is a gathering place of memory, celebration, and communion that uses art and culture to enrich and sustain its community.”   

The artwork made during the residency will be considered for publication in Kolaj Institute’s Folklore Collage Society, a printed journal dedicated to artwork and artists who activate, transmit, and celebrate folklore as a form of cultural expression and a strategy for community resilience. In its pages, stories, statements, essays, field notes, poetry, and song lyrics mingle with collage art that shows how collage artists are thinking about the folklore. Artwork will also be considered for an exhibition at Kolaj Institute Gallery in New Orleans that will take place 14 February to 11 April 2026.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

New Orleans-based artist and chef Heidi Hickman has had her photography and collage shown in group exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans and the New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery, as well as “Big Orange Monster: An Emergency Collage Exhibition” at Kolaj Institute Gallery in September and October 2025. She was also Chef-in-Residence at the New Orleans African American Museum of Art, Culture, and History.

Julie Glass is a sculptor working in wood, steel and textiles. She has exhibited at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the New Orleans Contemporary Art Center, the Aquarium Gallery, the Good Children Gallery, the Kolaj Institute Gallery, the Carroll Gallery at Tulane University, and the Louisiana Jazz and Heritage Museum in New Orleans; the Waveland Gallery in Mississippi; the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago; the Glassell Gallery, the Carey Saurage Arts Center and the Louisiana Art and Science Museum in Baton Rouge; the Masur Museum in Monroe, the Alexandria Museum of Art; the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum (solo show), the Norton Art Gallery, ArtSpace (solo show and group shows), and the Marlene Yu Museum and other locations in Shreveport. She has completed a residency at the Kallenberg Tower. She has also created public art permanently installed at the Shreveport Regional Arts Council (ArtStation) and designed and created steel art frames in Shreveport Common for the display of blankets created during the Nick Cave residency. Glass and her wife have recently moved to Amite, Louisiana where they are renovating a 100-year-old house. Learn more at www.julieglassart.com.

Liz Hamilton is an Alabama-based photographer and collage artist. She holds a BFA from the University of Montevallo, where she received the Excellence in Photography and Mixed Media awards. She holds an MA from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and an MFA in eLearning from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She also studied at the Scuola Leonardo da Vinci in Florence, Italy. Her work has appeared in group and solo shows in Cambodia and Italy and in the US in Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Tennessee, and Washington.

Trish Crapo lives on an organic fig farm in Leyden, Massachusetts, but grew up in Miami, Florida. She works in collage, photography and words. She has two published books of poetry: a poem sequence, adrift, a rowboat, published by Open Field Press in 2021, and a chapbook, Walk through Paradise Backwards, published by Slate Roof Press in 2004, with two subsequent reprintings. Her photos, collage, and altered books have been exhibited in New England; at The New School in New York City; in Moscow and Tula, Russia; and in Havana, Cuba. Important projects for her include The War and Peace Project, a collage project in which roughly two dozen artists made 748 collages, using every page of a Soviet edition of War and Peace as their substrate; and her ongoing work with the Western Massachusetts-based artist group, Exploded View, that combines elements of poetry, performance, and visual art. The artist was on the panel, Collage & Poetry, at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2024.

ABOUT THE FACULTY

Emily Denlinger has worked as Area Head and Professor of Digital Arts, Photography and New Media at Southeast Missouri State University since 2009. Originally from Ohio, she holds BFA in 2D Art with a Concentration in Photography from Bowling Green State University, and an MA in Digital Art and an MFA in Photography and Digital Art from Maryland Institute College of Art. Her collages have been exhibited across the USA and are held in collections internationally. Denlinger’s collage animation, Angel Baby vs. Drone Eagle, was part of Collage on Screen program at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2024. She also took part in Kolaj Institute’s Collage on Screen Artist Residency in 2023 and the Collage & Illustration Residency: Frankenstein. In addition to her gallery practice, Denlinger creates accessible wearable art that is created for commissions or sold in the local community at boutiques and fundraising sales. In her free time, she works with the Cape Girardeau County Clerk’s office to promote voting and voter registration and as an election judge. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory and www.emilydenlinger.com.

Ric Kasini Kadour, a 2021 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellow, is a writer, artist, publisher, and cultural worker. He is the director of Kolaj Institute and one of the founders of Kolaj Magazine. His curation work includes exhibitions in Vermont at S.P.A.C.E. Gallery, the Vermont Arts Council, and the Southern Vermont Arts Center. He was also the Curator of Contemporary Art at Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh, Vermont, USA in 2019 and 2020. In conjunction with Kolaj Fest New Orleans, which he founded, and LeMieux Galleries, he has curated seven exhibitions focused on critical issues in collage. Other exhibitions include “The Money $how”, co-curated with Frank Juarez, 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 “Mystical 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. Since the opening of Kolaj Institute Gallery in 2024, he has curated ten exhibitions, most recently, “Joy and Grief: An Exhibition of Collage” (April 12-May 31, 2025), “Collage As Art Movement” (June 14-August 31, 2025), “Big Orange Monster: An Emergency Collage Exhibition” (September 10-October 18, 2025), and “Trash as Material” (October 25-November 29, 2025).

Kadour is the editor and publisher of Kolaj Magazine. He has written for a number of galleries and his writing has appeared in publications including Hyperallergic, OEI, Art New England (where he was the former Vermont editor), and Wissenschaft und Frieden (forthcoming). Kadour maintains an active art practice and his photography, collage, film 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. www.rickasinikadour.com