-collage — Nava Lubelski

My collage works take as their starting point the Eastern European cut paper folk art known as wycinanki. As the 1st-gen child of a refugee from WWII, these pieces overtly reference the past as well as my childhood experience with 80s street art, including an urban stylization of nature, alongside the ongoing themes of examining value in terms of work (both as labor and as perfection). I grew up in an industrial neighborhood in New York City and my own root aesthetic of “traditional” paper collage originates with a type of paper "folk art" entirely different from the paper-cuts of 19th century peasants. My paper folk art roots are urban, American, imperfect, and crowd-sourced. The layering of posters and stickers with grime, stains and ripped, raw edges of older flyers and graffiti scrawls is the communally-made paper art that informs my paper experiments.

Strike, 2023, cut paper collage, dirt and acrylic on paper, 20" x 26"

Sunday Morning, 2023, cut paper collage, dirt, ink and acrylic on illustration board, 20" x 30". Available as an archival pigment print on cotton rag paper in a limited edition of 10.

Ink Blot, 2023, cut paper collage, ink and acrylic on illustration board, 20" x 30"

Cheers, 2023, cut paper collage, ink and pencil on illustration board, 22" x 28"

Work Makes You, 2022, cut paper collage, dirt, ink, lace scraps and acrylic medium on illustration board, 20" x 30". Available as an archival pigment print on cotton rag paper in a limited edition of 10.

Rabota, 2022, cut paper collage on paper, 30" x 44" The title is the text mirrored in the piece, the Russian word for "work".

What Works, 2022, cut paper collage on paper, 30" x 44"

Folklore, 2022, cut paper collage, ink and pencil on illustration board, 20" x 30"

Piles of Work, 2022, cut paper collage, ink and pencil on illustration board , 20" x 30"

NAVA LUBELSKI