What Gets Glued Together: Considerations of Collage in Multimedia Literature

A long form essay in defense of a controversial art form

Making of “glass grass” collage by Ashley-Devon.

~As a scientist and an artist, I am constantly tasked with both observing worlds in this reality and crafting worlds to transport audiences into new realities. I have found that collage, especially when presented as a complement to poetry, allows me to theorize and world-make in ways that academic social study does not afford. I am not alone in this craft.~

Introduction

Perhaps the most accessible art form, collage is a globally beloved means of expression. A modality that takes its name from French (i.e. coller- “to glue,” collage- “a pasting”) [1], the plucking of images and objects from their encountered sources followed by their unique arrangement and sealing with adhesive is a ritual that often serves as a child’s first foray into the arts [2]. Perhaps presuming themselves to be above the simplicity of youth, many critics of the art form characterize its accessibility and method of creation as too elementary and derivative; it’s not “real” art to them. In the early 2010’s Ric Kasini Kadour, editor of Kolaj magazine noted his concern that collage is still struggling to be received as real, stating “collectors and curators look skeptically at the medium, concerned about its archival qualities. Critics often dismiss the medium because the use of found images violates some weird notions of authenticity [3].”

I insist that collage is, and always has been, far more than just juvenile entertainment and uplift it as a tool that anyone can deploy to craft landscapes in which we may toy with complex emotions and social phenomena. However, before rejecting the idea of child’s play, I want to pause and recognize that in quality academic institutions, everything (including play) is pre-designed and pre-scheduled by teachers and administrators to maximize learning. Collage is a common art class activity for elementary schoolers not just because glue and construction paper are cheap and it utilizes easy-to-work-with materials. Collage is known to greatly accelerate children’s critical thinking, fine motor, and problem-solving skills [4][5]. For children who are victims of traumatic events or life-threatening circumstances, collage has played a role in encouraging emotional regulation via the expression of inner thoughts, desires, and fears (e.g. an orphaned child making a collage consisting of people, pets, and food titled “our community”) [6]. This remedial effect has also been observed among elderly individuals, particularly ones with disorders, like dementia, that distort reality and make interpersonal communication challenging. In collaging, study participants have been able to conjure accurate memories and reminisce on their lives without hallucinations and the fear that accompanies them [7].

If collage is play, it is playing God. What one creates, nurtures, or destroys while playing God tells us so much about not only the artist but also ourselves as we work to orient ourselves within the landscapes of the work. What resonates with us as we gaze into a collage nonverbally speaks to tropes that appear in the most classic realms of lore-heroes and villains, love and loss, morality and sinfulness etc.

The lessons and insights that we find in the worlds presented to us by a collage can be extracted and carried in the so-called real world to help us achieve a myriad of goals related to individual and collective health, sociocultural belonging, and legacy planning.

Collage as world-making in storytelling

I think constantly about the worlds we build around us. Who do we choose for our inner circle of friends? Where do we go with those people, and what music do we play on the car ride there? What does the air smell like in our bedroom? In our work office? In the train station we use for our daily commute? What sights, sounds, and smells absolutely repulse us and ensure that we will never have positive associations with the attached objects or people? Each day we wake, we world-make with our encounters and choices.

Consider an academic way of discussing the human inclination to world-build using what immediately surrounds us. In 1962, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss posited several social theories in his book , a (rather problematically titled) series of essays on epistemology and how people construct systems of understanding. In the book, he too introduces the coller root word into the equation, comparing the process by which humans craft ideological frameworks, specifically myths, to the work of a bricoleur, a sort of handyman or jack-of-all-trades dayworker. According to Lévi-Strauss, “the ‘bricoleur’ is… someone who works with his hands and uses devious means compared to those of a craftsman (p. 11).” By “devious,” he does not mean wicked; rather he refers to the spontaneous and not mandating specialized training to create. By “craftsman,” he is referring to those who have completed specialized training in their field, not suggesting that the work of the bricoleur is without value. A bricoleur is a French peasant farmer who does not have much money for tiles and marble, but he still uses his will and savvy to reinforce mud with straw and small stones to build a suitable-enough house for his family. In this line of thinking, we are all bricoleurs; we take what we see, hear, and feel and assemble it into something of utility to fulfill our wants and needs.

Myth makers, specifically, are important bricoleurs, insists Lévi-Strauss, because they craft the literal narratives that generations of people will use as guiding lights in their lives and spread as truths to encourage others to live in a similar manner and maintain social harmony. This is, of course, a monumental task and is one that is often (perhaps indirectly) assigned to poets. Via the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer pieced together passed down political history, understandings of the universe and the supernatural, and poetic meter to create epics that heavily colored how contemporary Greeks understood the heavens, their empire’s sociopolitical history, and their beliefs regarding the management of their own needs, wants, and fears. Even today, modern academics lean on Homer’s epics to understand ancient Greek society.

Pressing on, Lévi-Strauss then posits that as of the modern era of the 20 thcentury, scientists are the new myth makers/world builders, wielding the power to manipulate and present data in ways that influence the way entire nations eat, travel, clean, sleep, etc. For example, if the dairy industry well crafts lore via tailored “facts” around milk, they can influence millions of people to purchase and guzzle several glasses of cow product each day [9]. Many scientists have accepted this assigned role, embracing a Hippocratic duty to never harm, and dialogue is ongoing in various sciences about how to take the role of bricoleur world-marker seriously and ensure that all production of scientific knowledge is performed ethically and presented without influence from personal or institutional agendas [10].

As a scientist and an artist, I am constantly tasked with both observing worlds in this reality and crafting worlds to transport audiences into new realities. I have found that collage, especially when presented as a complement to poetry, allows me to theorize and world-make in ways that academic social study does not afford. I am not alone in this craft. Given the difficulty of communicating an entire narrative within a world without words, many collagists opt to combine their creations with text. Poetry, one of the more boundless literary arts, has been documented as existing in conjunction with visual art as early as the 9th century, primarily in Japan. Across several medieval dynasties, waka poets crafted small parcels of poems that searched for the essence of Japanese existence (note that throughout most of Japanese history, “Japanese” and “human/person” are comingled, not distinct, concepts). Consider the following poem by Early Heinan period waka poet, Fun’ya no Yasuhide posthumously titled “Poem 22: A poem from a poetry competition at Prince Koresada’s house” (written in the late 800s):

A gust-and in that moment
The Autumn trees and grasses
Wither;
Yes, the mountain wind
Is aptly named ‘Storm’[11].

The poem begins with a gust of wind, forcefully shoving the reader into its world. The world of the poem is Japan, but not a Japan to which anyone has ever physically traveled. In the Japan of the poem, there exists only the wind, the flattened and withering trees and grasses, and a mountain. Your body has never been there, but you probably see it all in front of your mind’s eye. You may feel a cold chill as that intangible wind blows out of the page. You can sense the storm rolling across the last line’s horizon.

That is the power of a good poem, and when a good poem is partnered with a powerful image, a portal to a new realm opens.

Consider this collage of the same Fun’ya no Yasuhide poem [12]:

Visual rendition of “Poem 22: A poem from a poetry competition at Prince Koresada’s house” by Fun’ya no Yasuhide

With just the addition of a person’s image and morphing of the text, we can see the world of the poem 10x clearer. For one, the poem itself is the portal to this new realm, forming two rectangular windows through which both the wind and the reader blow to encounter our male subject in this interesting pose. The man shivers and guards his face, for surely the wind exists in his world now that he has come upon the poem, and we witness him side-eyeing the poem with surprised contempt. He is dressed in elegant clothing, for surely, he is an honorable Japanese man concerned with fashion and aesthetics. However, had he known that he would encounter the poem and the storm it ushers in, perhaps he would have worn closed-toed shoes!

Waka prevailed as a popular form of poetry in Japan for centuries after Fun’ya no Yasuhide, and consumers of waka poetry continued to find ways to amplify messages through mixed media. Below, an 18 thcentury room divider featuring thoughtfully arranged 12th century poems by Fujiwara no Teika demonstrates how poetry and collage intersect to form pieces that have daily utility and delineate the owner’s status as a person of high taste [13]. Although the product is simple, the assembler must also have ample knowledge of the waka greats and a tasteful eye enough to craft something that those who are not themselves poets can identify with and utilize to send signals of their status to all who enter their home.

Waka poems on a bamboo room screen

World-making as liberatory praxis

The 20th century also saw several collage art movements in the eras of cubism, dadaism, and constructivism. Picasso, well known for his drawings and paintings, was also both a poet and collagist. Though we cannot know whether he was aware of Lévi-Strauss’ work, we do know that Picasso completely embraced the notion of the bricoleur and was publicly adamant that the mark of a good artist is the ability to make do with what one has at hand, saying “when I haven’t any blue, I use red [14].” His collages, and the poems that accompanied some of them, signaled his excitement for the modern era, one which he hoped would be free from the rigidity of propriety and elitism and instead laden with boundless expression [15][16].

“En la parte posterior de la rebanada” by Pablo Picasso,1935. Musée national Picasso París.

“The Poet” by Pablo Picasso, 1911. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976

Collage as a means of disseminating messages regarding cultural heritage and contemplations of liberation is also prevalent throughout the African diaspora (an aside to note that Picasso too owed his love of collage and angular constructions to African art [17]). In a reality where reading and writing were prohibited as means of control and subjugation, enslaved Africans and their descendants have long relied on the bricolage of symbols and images to spread messages. Most notably, the quilting of patchwork blankets became a way for the enslaved to gift both comfort and the possibility of liberation to their loved ones. Quilts featuring a series of coded symbols served as maps and signs for those attempting to escape confinement via the underground railroad [18][19]. Proper keeping, reading, and interpretation of the fabric collages became imperative for survival, as the punishment for a caught escapee was often death, or arguably worse, separation from one’s family and known world after being sold even further South, where escape would be near impossible.

Flying Goose pattern. This quilt pattern told enslaved people to follow migrating geese as they flew to Canada during the spring and summer months.

A Flying Goose quilt square by Sharon Tindall

In the 21st century, artists like Bisa Butler have gained acclaim for keeping the quilting heritage alive and transforming it from a survival tactic to a mapping of Black cultural legacy [20]. From recreating the documentary photographs of Gordon Parks [21] to portraits of Salt n’ Pepa [22], to found vintage portraits that offer a snapshot of everyday Black life [23], Butler reminds audiences of the legacy Black Americans have created both in popular media and in the underground. Her collages are colorful and alive, communicating that this is how we should see Black history and culture, not as some black-and-white static of the past. Collage crafted in the spirit of African diasporic folklore paves literal and figurative paths for members of the diaspora to migrate away from oppressive, immobilizing realities and arrive at a place (perhaps literal, perhaps figurative) where freedom flourishes as status quo, empowering their communities to thrive.

“Colored Entrance (after Department Store, Mobile, Alabama by Gordon Parks, 1956)” by Bisa Butler, 2023. Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.

“Hot, Cool, and Vicious” (2022) by Bisa Butler, 2022. Photo by Gregory Pallante

“Four Little Girls, September 15, 1963” by Bisa Butler, 2018. Courtesy of Michelle and Pete Scantland

Amid the scrap collection, disassembly, envisioning, and reassembly work of collage, many consumers of the art form are seeking what so many of us (consciously or subconsciously) pursue in all media: truth.

When presented with a narrative that isn’t clearly labeled as FICTION, audiences tend to get antsy, demanding to know what’s “real” and what’s “fake.” Most people who insist on this distinction presumably do so to inform their own world making- what will they glean from the art and collect in their pockets as memento of what they’ve learned? How will these memento inform the self they construct and present from this moment forward? Is Bisa Butler sharing the “real” story of Black America? If she isn’t, what is lost or harmed by her fictions? Who gets to decide?

As bricoleurs and constructors of myths that may become accepted as complete truths, artists who engage creatively with history and geopolitics in their work run the risk of being accused of spreading misinformation. Is there space to accept that the goal of the worldmaking artist is merely to spread a truth, not the truth?

In his essay about how the narrative true/false binary prevails in the digital era [24], historian and author Hugh Ryan posits, then attempts to answer the question: “How does nonfiction function in the hands of writers who aren’t sure the truth exists?” He responds to himself with the following:

Think about it this way: all essays are journeys to new knowledge or states of being. The self is the shoulder we the reader are perched on for the journey. The content is the landscape we are traveling through and the path we are on…The form is our mode of locomotion, whether we are walking slowly and methodically from start to finish, or leaping wildly from beginning to end and back again.

Lyric essays work the techniques of poetry, the area of writing where we rarely ask if something is true or not. Thus, they forefront the idea that truth is in some fundamental way uncertain, unknowable, or uncommunicable, and that life is not at all like a story: it is confusing, conflicting, discontinuous, random, and with multiple or unclear meanings.

Lyric techniques literally complicate the ability of the reader to find truth in the written word. they leave things unsaid and therefore undefinable; they draw multiple, sometimes conflicting, meanings from one word or phrase; they break down sentence structure, embracing verb and tense confusion; they take the story out of linear time, which destroys an easy understanding of causality and motivation, etc.

With this essay, Ryan liberates the bricoleur artist from the obligation of depicting objective Truth onto canvas. The artist who plays with form and modality reminds audiences that we need not be bound by the rules of this realm and that we stand to gain infinite insights from the portals we create and pass through. A brave audience sits with the complexity of those insights as part of their own duties as citizens of Earth. Alas, we arrive at the same justification for collage as a form of play and a form of poetry-it places those who engage with it at the border of their established world and launches them into realms beyond. It is this rationale that I employed in writing my debut chapbook.

Function of collage in poetic memoir

My poetic memoir, *Meet Me Where the Water Runs into Itself Once Again: A Poetic Memoir in III Albums* is crafted in the spirit of the 2000’s Midwest emo scene. Thus, it is only fitting that each section (cheekily referred to as “albums”) be introduced by a boisterous compilation of images dripping with nostalgia. These “album covers” offer essence snapshots of my life during adolescence, teen years, and early adulthood. As with the waka poem collages discussed earlier, the worlds displayed in each of these collages is all at once familiar and novel. The reader gets to meet recurring characters and encounter elements found within the poems. The collages and their thematic significance are as follows:

Album I | Second Sundays | Childhood & Innocence

In Second Sundays, we have our first encounter with the speaker/protagonist. A child in church (as always on Sundays) with a Bible in lap and a candy in palm. Nearly everyone who grew up in the Black church will immediately recognize the figure used to represent the speaker. She is a classic, yet nameless, figure in Gilbert Young’s painting First Sunday. This painting graces the walls of many Black churches and the basements of your favorite grandma or auntie. As the subject of Second Sundays, Young’s featured girl shift from her silly demeanor in the original work to stunned curiosity as the angelghost girls appear before her for the first time. This otherworldly chorus of girls sweep their way into the church through a crash of flood water. We also see several elements that are pervasive throughout the section’s poems, namely water, sky, “pixie dust,” and hair.

“First Sundays” by Gilbert Young, 1992

“Second Sundays” by Ashley-Devon, 2025

Album 2 | In Which I Enter an Era of No Water | Pubescence & Questioning

As the name suggests and the collage demonstrates, In Which I Enter an Era of No Water features a transition from the whimsical era of childhood to a bloody, messy period of pubescence. We see a framed purity vow pushed out to the horizon by the waves, replaced with questions. The speaker is lost and without a sense of self, hence the self portrait figure covering their face, denying the viewer an opportunity to confirm their identity or ever come to know them.. This desert is represented by the text of “Genre Trouble,” an essay found in Adam Pendleton’s Black Dada, that uses bricolaged quotes from social theorists and artists to question the essence of genre and what it means to be categorized. In this land, the speaker is disoriented, overwhelmed with uncertainty and the mess surrounding them.

“In Which I Enter an Era of No Water” by Ashley-Devon, 2025

Album III | Night on the Town | Adulthood & Actualization

As the final poem of the second section tells us, the speaker feels an urgent need to escape the desert and its torments, recognizing that the “plot can’t continue” if the speaker were to give up and perish in the second act. It is in this grueling pursuit of a new landscape that they transition into the final setting, the snow-capped mountain. The mountain starts at the edge the desert landscape, and with it being a frigid environment, most of the water here is frozen and inaccessible for drinking or swimming. Here, we meet the plastic girls, who stand opposite of the ancestor. We see the glitz and glam of the speaker’s new world; it glitters but it is not gold, and the speaker recognizes that this realm, like the desert, is unsustainable. The viewer has the privilege of witnessing the moment that the storm rolls in, bringing with it the same floodwaters of ancestral aura we saw in Second Sundays. In a rapturous twinkling, the speaker is brought back to the realm of the self and cultural legacy, leaving behind the lure of lavishness below.

“Night on the Town” by Ashley-Devon, 2025

In this multimedia collection, there is no one correct way to enter or engage, only several roads that lead to a realm where some iteration of myself is liberated through self-reflection, perseverance, and ancestral guidance. I hope readers appreciate the worlds I have glued together and are inspired to embrace the adventures of experimental storytelling wherever they may find them.

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**Ashley-Devon Williamston** (MA, Sociocultural Anthropology; MFA, Creative Writing) is a multimodal storyteller working primarily with ethnography, poetry, and collage as tools for cultural empowerment and preservation. Their working time is divided between applied social research and creative literature. They also curate storytelling-focused initiatives through their company, Sprouted Seeds Media. They authored a poetic memoir, [*Meet Me Where the Water Runs into Itself Once Again](https://sproutedseedsstudio.etsy.com/listing/4488622619/meet-me-where-the-water-runs-into-itself)* (Bottlecap Press). You may find their other poems and culture writing in the *Transforming Anthropology, African-American Review, The Rumpus*, *The Infrarrealista Review*, *Ginger Magazine*, *Dinner Bell Magazine*, and beyond.

*Originally published at [https://sproutedseedsmedia.substack.com](https://sproutedseedsmedia.substack.com/p/what-gets-glued-together-considerations).*