2025. Courtesy of the artist.
SYMPOSIUM AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS 2025
The World’s on Fire. Whatcha Gonna Do?: Politics in Collage
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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, 25-29 June 2025. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend.
A 2023 rock song by Dolly Parton goes, “The world’s on fire. Whatcha gonna do when it all burns down? Fire, fire burning higher. Still got time to turn it all around…Oh, can we rise above? Can’t we show some love? Do we just give up? Or make a change?” Collage as a political art form has a particular relevance to today as well as a strong historical context. From its roots in the European anti-fascist and Russian revolutionary movements in the early 20th century to its expressions during the U.S. Civil Rights era to its current manifestations in the fight for social justice in South America, collage is used by artists around the world as an impetus for social and political change. During the Symposium at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, we will hear from Glenyse Thompson, Jody Zellen, Lori Petchers, and Suzanne Gore about how their work seeks to contribute to the political discourse.
2025. Courtesy of the artist.
In 2025, Kolaj Institute brought together collage artists to make artwork in response to Brussels-based Open Dialogue Foundation Vice-President and Executive Director Martin Mycielski’s Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide. Based on the Polish experience, the Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide offers its readers information and tools for recognizing and resisting authoritarianism. In a clear series of lists, the Guide lays out what to expect in a society being led by an authoritarian regime, rules for surviving such a regime, and strategies for engaging with authoritarian supporters. The resulting book was published in May 2025. Contributing artists Fairfield, Connecticut-based Lori Petchers (image top), Boise, Idaho-based Suzanne Gore, and Sedona, Arizona-based Jennifer R. Myhre will speak about how they make political collage and their work in the project.
2019-present. Courtesy of the artist.
Since 2019, Los Angeles, California artist Jody Zellen has engaged in an ongoing collage project that consists of daily Instagram posts of digital collages that combine news images from lead stories, juxtaposed with excerpts from the headline that accompanies that photograph. At the end of each year, Zellen aggregates the images into a collage animation. In her “Photo News” project, phrases like “virus variant spread” and “despair deepens” clash with others, like “higher profits needed” and “return to normal life”. “This ever changing but always familiar cacophony of headlines and images gives voice to the uniquely fragmented realities we now inhabit,” wrote the artist. “My works take advantage of chance juxtapositions to inspire thinking about relationships between what is seen and what is imagined. I easily flow back and forth between analogue and digital processes. Words and images culled from the news media have long been a source for my myriad projects. I am drawn to the poetic potential of headlines and captions juxtaposed with abstracted reductions of original images and have collected headlines and news photos for years, archiving them for use as raw material.”
12″x10″; ink, gold leaf and acrylic monoprint collage mounted on archival paper; 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Freedom Summer was an organized, season-long action designed to promote equality in the South. The 1964 campaign, organized by activist Bob Moses, sent volunteers, mostly white, to join Black residents in the state to assist with education, community activities like voter registration. Campaign workers were routinely harassed by local police. St Petersburg, Florida artist Glenyse Thompson paints and collages first hand accounts from people working for equality that summer from the Congress of Racial Equality, archived by the Wisconsin Historical Society as part of their Freedom Summer Digital Collection. The archivists wrote, “This entire folder documents some of the many acts of violence, economic reprisals, threats, and intimidation experienced by civil rights workers before, during, and after Freedom Summer. Reprinted articles about African American Mississippians’ 1963 efforts to encourage voter registration in the face of threats, shootings, and intimidation.” Thompson’s collages make visible stories from the past that help us understand what people experienced and invites us to think about these sixty-year-old incidents in light of similar stories we may hear today about interactions people of color have with law enforcement.
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
Glenyse Thompson is a Florida-based artist. Among many publications, her work was featured in the April 2023 issue of Architectural Digest, “In Focus: Legacy of Black Women Makers”. Home décor firm Brewster Wallcoverings collaborated on a capsule collection, “A-Street Prints x Glenyse Thompson Wall Mural Collection”. Her work has also appeared in Southern Living, Town and Country Magazine, Elle Decoration UK, Metropolis Magazine, California Design and Home, Houzz, Hunker, Design Milk and Aspire Home and Design. Commissions include cover art for Designers Today magazine and Great Guns London. Her artwork is in the collection of Boston Children’s Hospital and private collections. Thompson’s collages, All That Glitters Isn’t Gold 1 and 2, were part of “Many Americas: Art Meets History”, curated by Ric Kasini Kadour, at the Southern Vermont Arts Center in 2022. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory and www.glenyse.com.
Jody Zellen is a Los Angeles-based artist who works in many media simultaneously. She holds a BA from Wesleyan University, an MFA from CalArts, and a Master of Public Service from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Zellen was the recipient of a 2021, 2016, and 2011 City of Santa Monica Artist Fellowship; a 2012 California Community Foundation Mid Career Fellowship; a 2011 Center for Cultural Innovation Artistic Innovation Grant; as well as a 2004 City of Los Angeles Fellowship. Her interactive installations were shown at the Los Angeles International Airport (2019); Long Beach City College Art Gallery (2017); and the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (2014). In 2023, four of her collage GIFs were presented at the Pixel Party at Kolaj Fest New Orleans. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory and www.jodyzellen.com.
Lori Petchers is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist. Her film work has been presented at film festivals worldwide. Her documentary A Self-Made Man (2013) premiered on America ReFramed on PBS in 2015. She received an Artist Fellowship Grant in Film/Video from the State of Connecticut and a regional Emmy nomination for her work. Petchers is also a co-creator of “Old Bags”, a multi-media art project exploring female identity and aging. Her collages have been shown in numerous galleries and venues including the Albany International Airport and the New Orleans Photo Alliance. Petchers took part in Kolaj Institute’s 2025 virtual residency, Politics in Collage: Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide. The artist lives and works in Fairfield, Connecticut. Learn more at www.loripetchers.com.
Originally trained in print in newspaper and graphic design, Boise, Idaho-based Suzanne Gore holds a Bachelor of Science Communications major in advertising with minors in graphic arts, journalism, and creative writing. Her work in collage, assemblage, video and photography has been shown in California, Wisconsin and Idaho. In addition to garden building, her creations include a series of functional sculptural furniture, collaged vases, photo montage, abstract collage and painting, book arts and bindery, portraiture, papier mâché, interior design and faux finishing. The artist took part in Kolaj Institute’s 2025 virtual residency, Politics in Collage: Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide and Collage Artist Residency Scotland: Castles as Buildings, Metaphors, & Systems of Power in September 2024. Learn more at www.suzannegore.com
Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 25-29 June 2025. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend.