Art historians may contend that it was Dada that brought collage into the Western canon. Specifically, it was the German Dadaist Hannah Höch who popularized photomontage as a means to access the subconscious, political, and absurd. But few art historical surveys of photomontage (or more broadly collage) have considered the medium to be a quintessentially queer art form.
The act of collaging can be a passive and even violent affair — the slicing of limbs, the composing of Frankensteinian faces — yet queer artists have continually turned to the technique for its ability to recast that violence by rearranging symbols of aggressive hypermasculinity into scenes of same-sex tenderness, providing a rare glimpse into the paradoxical softness of roughness. Central to the queer practice of collage is the construction of new worlds and identities, the outward use of a violent action to protect a vulnerable inner life. READ MORE
