Vahge

Vahge is a young self-taught collage artist. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY after moving there in 2007. Vahge learnt to use her imagination from a young age whilst living in the outskirts of South Baltimore. This was a very quite and isolated place. She made up stories and imaginary friends, which were followed by making collages that she still creates today. Her collages have been collected and exhibited worldwide: in London, Germany, Italy, New York and many more.

Quote Vahge “I’ve always been curious about old portraits and what the person in the portrait was like, what their life was like”. (Vahge, Jun 16, 2013).

Story telling is still a very important part of her working process today. She builds sets for her characters and sometimes even names them, as they are personal to her. Vahge places her characters centre stage focusing on their inner confusion and unique beauty. Her work is very detailed and she uses layers of paper to create her scenes and characters, spending a long time dressing and decorating them. Her works are created with precise proportion, containing depth and combining aspects of literature, dreams, theatre, music and portraiture as well as a hint of humour. She always focuses on combing the elegant with the odd.

Louise

This image called “Louise” portrays a colourful elegant lady made from countless pieces of paper. Vahge has created this piece in a Victorian-like style. It could be said that Vahge was influenced by the portraiture paintings from this era. Her images contain unmatching eyes, which might have belonged to famous people cut out from magazines. The complexity within the image is intriguing and shows beauty, ugliness and insanity. When you first look at the image it looks vaguely normal and it is not until you look closer that you notice the oddity. As well as being beautiful they portray awkwardness.

All the images from her collaging series made in 2012 consist of a centralised composition throughout. The fact her character is called ‘Louise’ tells the viewer that each collaged portrait is personal to her. Creating this image Vahge has collaged over the original face by using two different characters. One section is a female adult and the other section is an image of a child. This creates a strange and creepy look. Using antlers from an animal as her head piece changes the mundane into something bizarre and thought provoking. The use of someone’s large stomach dominates the image and makes it look strange. It almost looks as if this part of the characters body belongs in modern day and does not fit within the image. The use of rich, regal colours reflects how Vahge has taken inspiration from the fashion style in Victorian times. This also comes across in the choice of fabrics and textures used in the collage. She has combined silk, fur and starfish which strangely works very well. It could be said that Vahge has created an old-fashioned looking paper doll, which she creatively dresses and this was something she used to do as a little girl. It is hard to understand the meaning behind this image but I feel that Vahge wants to take the viewers on a journey back in time to show them where it all began.

I have taken inspiration from Vahge’s works as she manages to make beautiful but strange art pieces influenced by childhood memories. I am interested in how she uses not only different colours but also experiments with certain textures and items such as the antlers.