BAZAAR

BazaarSTYLENo longer ju st an af ter-school project,the collage is getting a high-fashionmakeover. We asked some of ourfavourite visual artists to create theirown works, inspired by this season’sbiggest runway trends.&The internet is a dynamicspace that allows for muchinnovation and creation.In this online world,Instagram has gainedprominence as a visualplayground for millions ofusers, particularly artists.The app has opened uppreviously inaccessiblechannels for those lookingto reach industry leaders,new audiences, and new sources of inspiration.An interesting trend to emerge out of Instagram is the riseof the collage. For the past few years, the playful medium thatlived in scrapbooks has made a comeback in a big way,especially in fashion. This art form is increasingly being usedby designers and brands to create lookbooks, campaigns, andother visual identities. Brands such as Chanel, Stella McCartney,and Céline have all worked with collage at some point, andmost recently, both Coach and Kenzo used the technique fortheir Spring/Summer 2018 campaign imagery.One possible reason for the emergence of the collage isthe excessive visual matter in our daily lives, much of itcoming from advertising and media. Fashion imagery, inparticular, is a rich source of material for collage artists whomix and match elements from various sources to createsurreal new worlds that play with fashion’s more fantasticalside. By simply taking an image out of its original context``````and placing it in a newsetting, collage artists cantell their own version ofa story and make theimage evoke an entirelynew response in a viewer.Another reason whycollage is attractive to artistsis the wide scope it offersfor experimentation andcollaboration, and the factthat it allows each artist todevelop their own distinct style. Besides, there’s also theundeniable appeal of not being bound to a specific palette orstructure and the medium’s general no-rules, DIY-styleaesthetic. Collage bridges the gap between analogue anddigital, giving artists a relatively easy art form through whichto explore multiple themes at one go.To celebrate the medium, we’ve asked four visual artists tocreate their own unique works interpreting Spring/Summer2018’s most exciting trends. From Sarah Kaushik’s experimentswith vintage imagery to graphic designer Ayesha Kapadia’s opticalillusions or even California-based collage artist Patrick Keohane’shomage to checks, the future of this incredible medium definitelylooks promising. As Jean-Luc Godard says, “It’s not where youtake things from—it’s where you take them to.”The writer is founder of the newsletter The Alipore Post, andeditor of Design Fabric, an art and design publication.By Rohini Kejriwal