Collage art constitutes a dynamic medium where elements of the familiar are unsettlingly displaced into unfamiliar territories, offering a visceral exploration of the uncanny. Teetering between the comfort of recognition and the chilling thrill of the unexpected, the realm of contemporary collage art opens up a world of paradoxes, where the mundane is rendered extraordinary and the predictable unexpectedly disrupted.

My recent article at the Uncanny Archive, “Strangely Familiar Visual Narratives: An Exploration of the Interplay between Reality and Unreality in Contemporary Collage Art”, highlights the striking, haunting works of some contemporary collage artists who have had a real impact on various social media platforms. The artists weave evocative visual narratives, each standing out with a distinctive approach to the medium by employing their unique artistic vernacular to translate the ethereal, the uncanny, and the nostalgic into tangible, visual experiences.

These contemporary collage artists, albeit divergent in their techniques and thematic focal points, share a predilection for the provocative interplay of reality and unreality, echoing the unsettling familiarity of the uncanny in their otherworldly compositions. With techniques crossing the realms of both digital and analogue – such as utilising archaic photographs, drawings, magazine fragments, and ephemera from antiquated encyclopedias, the digitally impactful artists craft narratives that mesmerise, evoke feeling, stimulate the mind, and spark our curiosity.

Conceptually, they achieve this in various ways, from incorporating familiar objects in strange contexts and vice versa, resurrecting aesthetics and figures from the past which become merged with the present, adding elements from celestial bodies and the untamed natural world as well as layers of subtle commentary, embellishing images with crystals and glitter to promote body image positivity and emotional transparency, and creating an atmosphere that is at times nostalgic, other times ethereal or eerie. Their universe encompasses the Victorians, mythology, religious iconography, silent cinema, French New Wave cinema icons, fashion, pop culture, and more.