In collaboration with Kolaj Fest New Orleans, NOMA will host a panel discussion highlighting the artistic practices and cultural traditions of assemblage and collage in New Orleans. In conversation with Kristina Kay Robinson, artists Soraya Jean-Louis, Ryann Sterling, and Ashley Teamer will share insights into their practices and approaches to assemblage and collage as art forms and cultural connectors. 

This event is free and open to the public.

About the Panelists

Kristina Kay Robinson

Kristina Kay Robinson is an artist, writer, and scholar born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her writing in various genres has appeared in Art in America, Guernica, The Baffler, The Nation, The Massachusetts Review, and Elle among other outlets. Robinson is a 2019 recipient of the Rabkin Prize for Visual Arts Journalism. Currently, she serves as the New Orleans editor-at-large for the Atlanta-based Burnaway magazine.

Soraya Jean-Louis 

Soraya Jean-Louis is a Haitian-born, Harlem- and Brooklyn-raised artist, independent visual scholar,/educator, doula, and medical anthropologist. Jean-Louis utilizes archival and modern media to honor personal and collective ancestors, reflect on present realities, and imagine expansive possibilities through collage, assemblage, abstract expressionism, surrealist paintings, installation, writing, and the natural healing arts. She explores speculative possibilities within Black Feminist Futurist frameworks, lived experiences, ancestry, culture, interiorities, identity, and more.

Ryann Sterling 

Ryann Sterling is a southern Louisiana artist who takes the viewer through a sacred and sometimes secret journey through collages, mixed media, sculpture, and photography. Sterling’s experiences and the delicate intersection of art, the feminine, and southern black spirituality, connects the past to the future while reminding the viewer to remain present. 

Ashley Teamer 

Ashley Teamer’s collages explore the relationships between the body, nature, space, and time. Teamer uses painting, sculpture, photography, and sound to creatively intervene with indoor and outdoor architecture, revealing the malleability of our built environment. Through layering images, Teamer’s invented landscapes reveal relationships between divergent moments. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2014) and the Joan Mitchell Center (2018). Teamer received a BFA from Boston University in 2013 and an MFA from Yale University in 2022.

Featured Image Credits: Ryann Sterling, Rites Through Passage, 2021. Collage, Found objects and video still. Courtesy of the artist.