The Rose: A Circular Genealogy of Collage

This lush volume by Justine Kurland reconfigures the history of collage through the work of 44 artists, from Ruth Asawa to Deborah Roberts

With a sprawling, loose interpretation of collage's past and present definitions, curator Justine Kurland presents The Rose: a compendium of 44 contemporary artists working in or around the medium. Choosing collage, Kurland argues, is an inherently political and contradictory method, as it allows artists to reframe and recontextualize all that we know. She asks us to consider collage as an active process: breaking things apart, centering the margins and forging new structures. Sourcing archival materials, family photographs, vernacular imagery, paint, scraps of paper, ceramics, fabrics, film and more, these artists, according to Kurland, harness these materials "as tools for survival, technologies for world-building and a means of radical deprogramming." With full-color plates of work by each artist along with Kurland's writing contextualizing its place in the canon, this book serves as a historic retelling of art history within the context of collage and the artists on the edge of the medium. Artists include: Ruth Asawa, Vija Celmins, Philo Cohen, Jay DeFeo, Leslie Hewitt, Kiki Kogelnik, Wangechi Mutu, Frida Orupabo, Wendy Red Star, Deborah Roberts, Keisha Scarville, Gwen Smith, Pamela Sneed, Lorna Simpson, Hannah Wilke, Francesca Woodman.