AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS 2026

Daily Collage Congress

At each Daily Collage Congress, we will review the day’s agenda. Speakers will share ideas about the state of collage. We will also hear updates about special projects taking place during the festival.

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Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 10-14 June 2026. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend.

DAILY COLLAGE CONGRESS THURSDAY

Welcome to Kolaj Fest New Orleans

Kolaj Institute Director Ric Kasini Kadour will officially open Kolaj Fest New Orleans at Thursday’s Daily Collage Congress and hear from a number of artists about projects, activities, and exhibitions taking place during the festival. Artists will be invited to contribute to the Great Collage Swap taking place on Sunday. Thursday’s Congress is the primary orientation to Kolaj Fest New Orleans.

Nikola Janevski will present “New Orleans-Magic and Protection”, a collection of collage shirts made in collaboration with New Orleans artists during his Solo Residency at Kolaj Institute. In the series, the jacket becomes the substrate. “Each piece is about exploring some aspects of identity,” said Janevski. “The series is inspired by the art and culture of New Orleans working with people that are from New Orleans or live here.” At Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2025, Janevski debuted “Reveries: Fragments of Identity,” a collection of collaged shirts made in collaboration with Andrea Burgay. During a December 2025 Solo Residency at the Kolaj Institute, Janevski worked with New Orleans artists LaVonna Varnado Brown, Cindy Green, Christopher Kurts, Chachi Lewis, and Michael Pajon to make the new series, which will debut as a fashion show during Thursday’s Daily Collage Congress.

DAILY COLLAGE CONGRESS FRIDAY

Being an Artist in the World: Contemporary Art Projects

As artists, we love to make. We love play and research and process. But then what? A major focus of Kolaj Institute’s Artist Development program concerns how we put our art out into the world. As collage artists, we have the added burden of moving our work through an ecosystem that may neither understand or appreciate what we are doing. The ongoing bifurcation of the Art Market and the collapse of mid-tier galleries that served as a bridge between spaces for emerging artists and the blue chip market adds to the struggle. During Friday’s Daily Collage Congress, Ric Kasini Kadour will share his thoughts on how thinking about one’s art making as a multifaceted contemporary art project can open doors to communities and institutions that are critical to getting one’s art out in the world. 

Cyndi Coon and Kim Larkin will introduce their book project, We Choose the Bear, that “uses collage to hold complexity, contradiction, humor, and grief, and to turn those fragments into something shareable.” Now published, We Choose The Bear is taking on life as a participatory practice, “one that invites others to remix, respond, and carry the conversation forward.” 

Based in Washington DC, transgender, non-binary, and intersex collage artist, herbalist, and occultist Jul Drake will share their practice of engaging with their Irish-American and queer identities to explore and excavate duality and shadow. Drake will speak about how they use collage and magic to address systems of power and oppression. “Eat Your Heart Out is imbued with the magickal purpose of revealing the most disturbed parts of our world under white colonial capitalist patriarchy. By gazing into the mirror of our own subconscious, we witness how these systems may be alive in us, below the surface, perpetuating their existence. We experience ourselves as a portal to the past, present and future. This piece began as an avenue for my own decolonial shadow work as I began exploring my lineage of ancestral harm to break these patterns, but it has evolved into a larger conversation around the collective shadow we face more egregiously each day. As my piece and our reality reflects, the monster of white colonial capitalist patriarchy consumes the sacred, particularly children, and simultaneously consumes its own soul. I hope my work helps to plant these seeds of truth and healing in those that need it most.”

“For a long time, I wasn’t sure how to categorize my work, and I worried I was doing it wrong because it didn’t look like anyone else’s. Over time, I’ve come to understand that the unfamiliarity is the point,” wrote Columbus, Ohio artist Emily Morgan. “Because I use collage as a way to relieve my persistent overthinking and to tap into my subconscious, I am able to act as my own archaeologist–excavating meaning, place, state, and growth after the work is complete, sometimes weeks or even years later. My work sits in the space between beauty and unease, order and instinct. I hope viewers feel that tension and recognize something of their own inner landscape within it.” On this panel, Morgan will share how her collage practice led her to curate “Pulp Stiction: Collage As an Act of Resistance,” an ambitious exhibition that will open at the end of 2026 with a series of workshops and panels. She wrote, “The project is intended not only to provide a space for resistance, connection, and collective strength–particularly at a time when many people are experiencing heightened anxiety, fear, isolation, and uncertainty–but also to position collage as a vital and critical force within contemporary art.”

DAILY CONGRESS SATURDAY

Getting Down to Business

What possibilities are there for collage artists? Building on the previous day’s themes, at Saturday’s Daily Collage Congress we will hear from three artists who have taken wildly different paths to getting art out into the world. Kerrie Bellisario will speak about the artist as entrepreneur. In addition to running collage collectives, Emily Morgan will speak about her publishing project and Kirk Read will speak about how he uses collage in his social work. We will get a preview of the Collage Art & Book Market taking place later in the day. 

Working across photography, drawing, collage, and sculptural installation. Lafayette, Indiana artist, art leader and activist Kerrie Bellisario “explores the profound relationship between private memory and public narrative, and the ways in which our personal and collective histories shape our identities and perceptions of the world.” In November 2025, Bellisario turned her passion for collage into a new business, It’s a Colorful Life. She wrote, “My simple collages have become journals, coffee mugs, pillows, and even clocks. And they are beautiful, and brighten living spaces. The online shop is off to a good start, but after entering a local competition, It’s a Colorful Life will get its own brick-and-mortar pop-up shop for the month of April 2026.” Her business was featured at the Museum Store Association’s Annual Conference & Expo in Philadelphia. At Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Bellisario will share her journey as a business owner developing a brand and product line that is the direct result of her collage art practice. “The focus is on joy: How the act of making, the act of transforming art into products, and the act of bringing beauty into the marketplace through these products have brought joy into my life, and how it impacts the lives of others.” She thinks of her new endeavor as a case study. “What began as a private act has now become public. I hope to inspire others to find their joy.” Bellisario will share practical tips on how to launch a business, build a brand, and follow a dream.”

Columbus, Ohio artist Emily Morgan founded the Columbus Collage Collective in 2023 “as a way to connect with other collage artists in Central Ohio. It quickly grew into a well-attended and well-received 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that has built meaningful bridges between artists and local businesses across the city. Our efforts to bring collage parties to unexpected places have connected people across Columbus through a free and accessible entry point to collage, bringing hundreds of participants to our tables.” Morgan wrote, the Collective “would never have come to life without my discovering my own personal collage practice in 2022. I have schlepped my work through more than a hundred markets and art festivals and have since landed in galleries across Ohio, with hopes of continuing to share my work globally.” In 2026, Morgan launched a new zine series, “The Art of Coming Back”, which pairs contemporary and historic writers with her artwork. She wrote, “The series functions as both personal excavation and collaborative practice, expanding my work beyond visual art into shared storytelling. It introduces my audience to writers and poets they may not otherwise encounter, while bringing writers’ audiences into my visual practice.” On this panel, Morgan will speak about her experiences of starting a collage practice, creating a collage collective, and publishing a zine series. 

Portland, Oregon writer and artist Kirk Read is one of the co-leads of the Pacific Northwest Collage Collective. He will speak about his volunteer work with Write Around Portland, where he developed a collage curriculum to support some of the ten-week writing classes that take place in housing projects, jails and other socially oriented efforts. “I am committed to the idea that social practice in the arts must deliver more than cheesy, self-aggrandizing audience feedback sessions to fulfill neoliberal grant requirements,” wrote Read. “Throughout my career I have created challenging programming that engages communities in the artmaking process, often commissioning new work on topics like barebacking, crystal meth, AIDS, gender, homelessness and sex work. I believe that inclusivity is a generative practice that has the potential to bring people with lived experience into the white-walled arts industrial complex. Part of an event curator’s job is to protect artists from the disease of institutional blandness. The world, like sirens on a rock, whispers to artists ‘Paint your soul beige’.”

DAILY CONGRESS SUNDAY

Great Collage Swap

Sunday, 14 June 2026, 10:30AM-Noon
LeMieux Galleries, 332 Julia Street, New Orleans

On Sunday, we will gather one final time to say our goodbyes and to conduct The Great Collage Swap. To participate, bring a collage to exchange to the Info Table before 10AM Sunday. In return, you will be given a number. All of the collages will be displayed. During the program, a collage will be selected and matched with a number and the holder of that number will receive the collage. As the collages are matched, each artist has a chance to share their story. The Great Collage Swap takes place at LeMieux Galleries on Julia Street, the site of the “Bird on a Wire” exhibition.