Crossroads imagetic in Collage

Since collage was established as a unique language within Surrealism, it has undergone numerous reconfigurations and has been used in various ways around the world over more than a century of existence. From artistic to transgressive and political uses, from commercial to banal applications, collage remains alive, energizing both practices and thoughts. In Brazil, especially in recent decades, there has been a growing number of visual artists who work with collage, as well as emerging collectives, groups, and clubs producing technical and thematic works. Many of these pieces and aesthetic experiments feature images that challenge prevailing structures, exploring Afro-diasporic, Afrofuturist, Indigenous futurist, LGBTQI++, and other themes.

The subjects tackled by these artists and collectives span from explorations of techniques developed during the early decades of Surrealism, to analog and digital mixing, and to decolonial and counter-hegemonic aesthetics. To appropriate, reinvent, reconfigure, and give new meaning to printed residues (Lima, 1984) and the leftover images of the world are part of the process of creating a collage. This technique has been widely explored in Brazil and around the globe, particularly following the social isolation period caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, we can understand these image encounters as acts of affection, composed of fragments disfigured by tearing and/or scissors, breaking away from the square and rectangular forms of photographic capture (Fuão, 2011). It is the approximations or contrasts in meaning that allow for this loving encounter of fragments in our shattered world.

In this context of visual fragments continually republished and remixed in magazines, print materials, pamphlets, and various digital media, it is necessary to reflect on the ethical and aesthetic processes involved in the language of collage, and the visual regimes that educate and miseducate our gaze—regimes that can subvert colonial visual standards and open decolonial, counter-hegemonic fissures: cries of resistance from oppressed peoples and groups in search of freedom.

Because it brings together disparate symbols from partially random contexts, this text aims to draw a parallel between the ways of composing and experiencing collage and the ways of living and experiencing the sacred in some Afro-Brazilian religious traditions, especially in Afro-Indigenous Umbanda.

Afro-Indigenous Umbanda, or Trançada Umbanda (“Braided Umbanda”), is a Brazilian religion whose historical founding moment took place in 1908. It was formed through a synthesis of elements and practices from Christianity, Spiritism, and African-derived religions (e.g., Candomblé). Its focus is on spreading love and charity, with freedom grounded in principles of community and rejection of individualism. Worship is directed toward saints, orixás, and multiple energetic forces represented by nature.

The syncretism between African orixás and Catholic saints still exists in many terreiros (places of worship in Umbanda). However, a new movement has been gaining strength in recent years: an Umbanda that moves away from colonial Catholic influence and toward an Afro-Indigenous Umbanda that maintains its essence of love and charity, but no longer requires the syncretism with Catholic saints. The religious ceremonies, commonly called giras, center on orixá worship and communication with spiritual lines of energy represented by orixás and social groups historically marginalized by colonial Brazilian society, such as the preto-velho (spirits of formerly enslaved Black people) and boiadeiros (resilient men and women from the countryside who herded cattle). During the giras, spiritual mediums receive these evolving spirits, who offer advice and teachings for a better life to those seeking guidance. These contemporary giras have become opportunities to decolonize how these orixás and spiritual entities are perceived—focusing, for instance, on the care and welcoming of the spirits of pretos-velhos.

Within this religious and spiritual space, entities, orixás, and even syncretized Catholic saints are sought by individuals (known as consulentes) looking to open paths, achieve prosperity, and access better opportunities. It is in this energetic and metaphorical context of path-openings and crossroads that we establish a parallel with contemporary collage and the new perspectives developed by scholars of Surrealism.

If the notion of the crossroads emerges as openness to new directions, a poetics of life, a field of possibilities, a practice of invention and affirmation of existence—then it is also a transgressive perspective on scarcity, a breach in the disillusionment and hopelessness caused by the world’s afflictions (Rufino, 2019). To experience plunges into the sea of images—cutting, tearing, rearranging, and remixing them into new forms—is to accept the challenge of navigating new imaginative paths, diving into the unconscious, and making conscious choices in the act of creation.

The spiritual entities that inhabit the energy of the crossroads, especially Exu, offer possibilities for new paths, a more vibrant and energetically fulfilling life. Exu, in this role of protection and opening of roads, acts as a messenger between people and the orixás—and between the spiritual world and humans. Exu represents the joy that dances with chaos, provoking reflection and stirring thought (Òkè, 2024).

We can draw connections between this symbolic space of the crossroads and the freedom and poetic expression at the heart of Surrealism—particularly in the form-language of collage. What paths does the collagist choose among the sea of image fragments—whether printed, digital, or mixed? What marks of the self, and what ethical, aesthetic, and political stances does the artist express through the selection and loving encounter of these images?

In recent years, Brazil has hosted the Bienal Black Brasil Art, whose fourth edition is scheduled for 2026 with the theme Decolonizing the 5 Skins, inspired by reflections from the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. These five axes—texture, body, space, network, and community—guide the search for critical and collaborative artistic practices aligned with the construction of more equitable futures (Brito, 2025). In this space for artist training and traveling exhibitions, selected artworks challenge colonial themes through Surrealist aesthetics, such as painting, collage, installations, and video art—tensioning the paths of art and thought, creating crossroads, and opening routes that have been rarely or never explored. It is worth noting that the artist and performer selection process makes no distinctions based on socioeconomic status, gender, skin color, sexual orientation, or other social markers. There can be no new paths if diverse artists are not occupying and reflecting together on exhibition spaces—from the white cube to alternative or non-conventional art venues.

Another vivid and creative crossroads in the collage universe is the annual celebration of World Collage Day, proposed in 2018 by Kolaj Magazine editor Ric Kasini Kadour. The event aims to connect artists and provoke new ways of thinking through and with collage, beyond geographic boundaries and amid worsening political and social conditions in various regions of the world.

Kadour (2018), in his editorial for a special issue of Kolaj Magazine, explains that beyond the magazine’s goals, he seeks dialogue on the impact of art on people’s lives and humanity at large. When he proposed a creative “challenge” asking artists from around the world to create a single collage page, share how they began working in collage, and offer advice to newcomers, the responses were so sensitive and powerful that he concluded the most important insight was the value of giving artists space to talk to one another and to experience a sense of belonging in a community. This initiative crossed borders and barriers, becoming a turning point in the practice, discussion, and theoretical study of Contemporary Collage—reviving old questions and sparking new ethical, aesthetic, and political theories.

As we can infer, collage does not offer a single path but rather multiple crossroads—new ways forward, opportunities for revisiting familiar paths. Its democratic character and low cost bring together people of different ages and backgrounds, filling thoughts and experiences along the fine line between beauty and ugliness, reality and imagination, old and new, sacred and profane... or all of these mixed together. Collage, therefore, is a crossroads of practices and a provocateur of thoughts in free and loving motion. One cannot remain the same after tearing, cutting, pasting, and creating a collage.