“In the collective imagination, making collage is just child’s play, but collage is the union of various techniques, it cannot be simplified to just scissors and paper,” Diego Durañona, from the Argentine Collage Society, explains to PROFILE. (SAC), better known as Urko. This form of expression is on the rise, especially after the times of the pandemic.
Definitions please. Urko defines collage as an “art where it is resignified, it is created from the pre-existing. It is a retelling, it is rediscovering images, materials and ideas that have never been seen before. Continuous decision making. A study on the morphology, the support, the useful life of the paper”.
While for the Visual Arts teacher Laura Córdoba collage is a language. “It is constant search and transformation. It is a hybrid language that allows us to resignify and rebuild. It invites us to experiment plastically and poetically, it is a tool to express ideas before the world or navigate internally”.
From a psychological perspective, Gabriela Renault, dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Psychopedagogy, USAL, explains to PROFILE: “Collage can fulfill an expressive function, allowing the therapist, through his analytical method, to try to make the patient make them aware of those things that are involved within it, that have not been verbalized because perhaps there are no words for it or because it is perhaps painful or threatening to do so.
For this reason, when faced with the question, what is one looking for?, Renault considers that when using this technique or in workshops for different themes and ages, it is about “being able to put words into emotions, blockages, giving free rein to our creativity and thus releasing tensions”. To which the graduate maintains: “For this reason, it is a technique used in many Psychology schools, since it is for all ages and can be used at different times.”
Characteristics. The graphic designer Georgi Maekaneku, emphasizes to PROFILE its democratic character. “I think it’s one of the nicest features collage has,” she says. “It is available to everyone and does not require a large financial investment to start (with some magazines, scissors and glue, you can do it). It is a technique that can be carried out by both a person who is dedicated to art and an accountant, kinesiologist, psychologist, teacher, etc. ”, she points out.
Among other points, Maekaneku adds: “Collage doesn’t require you to have a great observant eye to begin with, just enjoying creating and playing is more than enough for you, little by little, to discover your own style and learn to handle this technique in the very process of creation”.
Also, its transformative and sustainable character. “Because in general we use materials that could be classified as garbage, or obsolete. I, there, find magic. I find it wonderful how we can give a second chance to books, photos, objects that once shone with splendor and the passage of time sank them into a dark drawer, until we found them and turned them into nothing more and nothing less than a work. of art”, affirms Maekaneku.
Public and pandemic. “Anyone can make collage if they have interest, papers and basic tools to cut and paste. It is a very accessible discipline at a technical level and also at a material level since things can be recovered that for many are discarded”, explains Córdoba. To which Maekaneku adds that collage “is the best way to get into art for those who have never done anything artistic. And at the same time it is ideal for more experienced people, who already use some other technique (be it illustration, ceramics, painting, etc.) since it makes them see the creative process in a different way, more relaxed and not so tied to certain rules. ” .
Based on her experience, Maekaneku sees in the workshops that more and more women are looking for time for themselves, to enjoy themselves, to do something they like and not to score points. “My students are either in their late 30s, 40s, or are retired or women about to retire, who are taking advantage of that time in their lives to do only what they like to do,” she says.
At this point, Maekaneku refers to covid. “Surely the pandemic has a lot to do with this change in thinking. It’s like now we all realized our own finiteness, ”he reflects. Córdoba agrees with this view: “I notice that with the pandemic there was an increase in people’s interest in this discipline (and it continues to rise). Many of the people who can stay at home focused on doing creative activities related to manual and artistic work, looking for some distraction in such a harsh context. In addition, social networks facilitate the dissemination of the work of collagists from all over the world, which motivate more people to create or investigate this universe, ”she says.
Urko also adds and agrees with this vision. “In 2020 and 2021, intuitively, many were introduced to this world and a large percentage took it as a way of life. Social networks also helped a lot to share and show the work that was being done. Definitely, I think that in recent years collage has grown a lot, not only in Argentina, but also in Latin America. Today it is common to find workshops, collage teachers, exhibitions, publications, and even exchanges between groups of sister countries,” he concludes. .
was always present
Laura cordoba*
Collage was always present in my life, especially in adolescence, where I filled my diaries and my room with cutouts of my favorite images. The more conscious search began when I was studying at the School of Art and in a self-taught way, recovering some books that were about to be thrown away. Something that began as a sort of recreation between drawing and painting more or less 15 years ago has become one of the fundamental languages for my visual expression.
I am Laura Córdoba (Río Negro, 1989). Graduate and professor in Visual Arts, specialized in Painting (National University of the Coast / School of Art of Luján).
I have lived for almost ten years in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, where I work independently as a collage teacher and in my plastic work, which is often in the form of paintings and other times the cover of books or records.
*Graduated in Visual Arts.
What is not spoken ill
Gabriela Renault*
Therapists, artists, playwrights, we know that what is not spoken makes us sick, obviously as analysts we deal with words, but we also know that everything speaks: the body, drawings, sculpture, acting.
But many times this speaking is hindered, the words do not flow, there are inhibitions, it is then that analysts, and it is also valid as a resource for everything that facilitates expression, we can appeal to a technique, such as collage. Through this technique we select pieces, cut parts, different images. Then, choosing, selecting and then the ability to unite, to integrate, to place the pieces in the same space is put into play.
Among those cuts, we produce meaning, we express a particular way of perceiving our internal world.
Collage or collage is an artistic technique that consists of assembling diverse elements into a unified whole.
A collage is a picture made up of different pieces of materials, which have been cut and pasted on a surface, since coller means to paste in French. The most used materials are usually flat, such as fabrics, cardboard, paper, photographs, newspaper clippings, pieces of plastic, magazines.
Collage is the art of giving a new meaning to images and serves to express our feelings visually, there we represent our dark internal world through the symbolic, giving it meaning and putting light on the most parts; it allows us to experiment, modify, remove, put, add, cut, whatever we need at the moment and allows us to transform what we no longer want, what does not serve us, what does not belong to us, what one day was and now it’s not. It gives us the power to cut, break, slit, paste, change and also transform and integrate the different aspects of our being.
*Dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Psychopedagogy, USAL.
I do what I love
Georgi Maekaneku*
My name is Georgi Maekaneku. After going through various careers and various jobs, looking for something to blow my mind, I came across Graphic Design. There I came across collage as a means of expression for all my facu deliveries. In 2013 he received me as a designer, and one night without really knowing why I felt the need to collage and that’s when everything started.
Today I do what I love. Every day I wake up thinking about how I can inspire those on the other side of the screen to dare to enter the world of collage, or any type of art.
I define myself as an artist, content generator and disseminator of this technique that has so much to give us. I really enjoy teaching these Collage classes, sharing everything I discovered about this technique in thirteen years of practicing it.
*Graphic designer.
Containment in collective work
SLM
The Argentine Collage Society (SAC) started in 2019. Paula Pérez and Urko noticed that there was an empty space, a need that no one was taking care of in the country and, faced with the question, why don’t we try? decide to form the SAC. Unlike the international and traditional groups, the premise of this new society was that it should be for everyone and with everyone. “More than a society, it was a federal collage network. It wasn’t fair that an idea that could be so big should only be left in the hands of four or five people”, says Urko.
After a month there were already meetings that were triangulated between CABA, La Plata and Rosario. Today the SAC works in various provinces and even abroad (Brazil, Spain, Australia, Italy), spreading the Argentine collage. Today it has more than two hundred active members where everyone participates equally in the decisions that are made.
Regarding its function, the Argentine Collage Society seeks to disseminate and make collage visible, generate points of debate and try to position collage on the national and international artistic level. “The SAC does not ask for a resume or track record, much less a portfolio of awards and exhibitions, it is simply a space for contention and visibility through collective work. We want to stop being considered as ‘others’ in each artistic call that is made, that the fear of saying or writing collage is lost, and that is why we appeal to the collective. In the collective imagination, making collages is just child’s play, and we definitely want to erase that idea. It is time for this art to be valued, for that the SAC was born, to try it”, affirms Urko.
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