LET'S SHARE OUR EXPERIENCES!
Thank you to all the people who have shared their personal experiences of how collage has helped to improve or preserve their mental health during difficult times in their lives.
Let’s share our experiences and nurture our mental health through artistic and creative expression.
“My aunt and godmother, Monica, was one of the most important people in my life, and I know I was to her. In an email she sent me years ago, she tells me about the moment we met. I was one year old, she was living abroad and had not been able to meet me before. She says that when she saw me and hugged me, she knew immediately that "I would always be hers and she would always be mine. She was generous, cheerful, enthusiastic, an exceptional cook and hostess, she was curious and loved everything to do with art, she loved life. In September 2020, she and her life partner caught Covid. Monica died two weeks later and he died three months later. She died alone, it hurts to think about. I hadn't told her that just a few days before she was infected, and as a result of the activities we invented with my daughter and son during the imprisonment, I had discovered something I really liked: making collages. When they called me to tell me of her death, I didn't know how to express all the pain that it caused me, and the only thing that occurred to me at that moment was to sit down and make a collage for her. The effect was immediate, it was like taking paracetamol, you know the pain will come back, but it helps you get through it for a while, which is no small thing. I understood that in this re-creation of images I had found something important that I did not want to let go of. She, who was immensely generous, unwittingly left me one last great gift, a lifeline to hold on to when the river becomes raging and no longer calm.”
victoria facio
"My encounter with collage was something I didn't know I needed. I was going through an emotionally difficult time where I felt lost, and it was thanks to my accumulated magazines that I finally found a path that led me to other means of expression that I never thought would share with me a sea of experiences that I live with abundance and gratitude. Collage has entered my life in a wonderful way and together with my work they are an incredible duo. Since my beginnings with collage, being able to recognize myself, dialoguing with myself, and that beautiful feeling of self-realization at the time of finishing some collages is something that I try to share, both my experience as a therapist, as well as in my current work, starting with workshops where collage has the objective of expressing, losing fear, self-discovery. That the person who decides to learn collage not only finds a tool to work on their emotions, but also finds a group of people who include, beyond the techniques or types of collage or groups. That's how I came to collage at a crucial moment, and I try to carry this idea into my daily life."
IVAN ESTRADA PÉREZ
"Collage has become a vital tool for my mental health, as I have faced various forms of violence and gender discrimination throughout my life, especially in the workplace, which caused me anxiety and depression for a long time. Also, having a neurodivergent condition with a late diagnosis has provoked a myriad of emotions in me and has led me to understand and redefine many of my childhood and adolescent experiences. The practice of collage turned out to be a therapeutic process, it became a safe space for self-expression, a form of resistance that allowed me to empower myself, since the selection and reassembly of different fragments to form a new image symbolized the reconstruction of my own identity, fragmented by very difficult and painful experiences. My recommendation to those seeking emotional support is to immerse themselves in the world of collage. Let your creativity flow without restrictions, without judgment. This art is not only a therapeutic path for our mental health, but it also becomes a traveling companion, a confidant who understands emotions without the need for further explanations."
GRACE DUEN
"In my personal experience, collage has been a tool for emotional and creative expression since childhood. During the pandemic, I rediscovered this art form through virtual art history and collage classes, which had a positive impact on my emotional well-being during those difficult times. Socially, participating in creative calls has allowed me to explore my imagination and make sense of my thoughts on singular topics, contributing to in-person and virtual exhibitions that highlight my perspective. For me, collage is a one-way trip with no return; once discovered, it becomes a passion that can become almost compulsive, although this emotion dissipates when contemplating the finished work. This medium gives me authentic creative freedom and a commitment to society by expressing my views on various aspects of life. Through my work, I try to convey important messages, dispel negative thoughts, and artistically materialize my vision of the world. Collage is therapeutic, I recommend it!”
SUSANA HERRLEIN
"Making collages is the tool that, without any pretension or intention in its process, helps me the most to understand how I am. And this is because through collage you cannot lie. You can call it a creative process, but it is really an emotional process. The power of collage for me is in this unconscious exercise of self-expression. It doesn't matter what you think you're doing when you start a collage, you never know how it will end. The colors, the images, the words and the shapes will tell you what you need. Personally, collage allows me to work out and express ideas and thoughts that I cannot do any other way. My mother died 6 years ago and collage has been one of the tools I have used to process my pain and through which I have seen my grief progress. It took me 5 years to print photos of my family. It took me 5 years to touch them, to break them, to organize them, to disorganize them, to wet them with my tears, to lose them, to find them... With a lot of patience and compassion for myself, I learned that collages are made even when you do not make them. That in my own healing process, the collage is always waiting for me.”
ALBA RODRÍGUEZ iLLESCAS
"In 2020, like many other people, a radical change in my professional life left me in pieces, which meant that I had to slowly and calmly collect all those pieces so that I could recognize and feel them one by one, so that I could put them back together and make the collage of my life with them. So, during that fateful year, as I put my life back together on many of those lonely afternoons, I transferred to paper and scissors my need to start over. To begin to rebuild my world, my head, what I am now and what I do not want to stop being: a person made up of small pieces, each as important as the most insignificant. Collage saved my life. It helped me to be at peace with myself. To treat each piece of me with the best care, as if it were paper. And as I have read so beautifully from a Chilean collagist: I make collage, therefore I am."
UNAI ÁLVAREZ
"My first encounter with collage was right after a painful separation. After 18 years of relationship, and unexpectedly, my whole world changed. I felt lost and hurt. I didn't know how to channel this anger and sadness until a friend told me about some collage workshops that a friend of hers was organizing. I was immediately hooked and let out all the anger in my collages. There I found new friendships, challenges and a great desire to move forward. Thanks to collage, I was able to gather the little pieces of my soul that were lost and build a new gift for myself and my daughter.”
PAULA GÓMEZ CALVO
"Hello, I'm Elisa. I've been working in the visual arts for a few years, using different techniques, but collage is the activity that motivates me the most, along with music. Collage has helped me a lot to improve my mental health, and it's still helping me: when I create, I try to focus on the here and now. Five years ago I went through a critical situation. I lost my son in the most brutal way, by suicide. I fell into a hole from which I couldn't find a way out, as if half of my body had been removed. My concentration was zero, I couldn't create anything; the only activity that could relax me was listening to music, and only at certain times. During the mourning period, I asked myself: What could I do to get out of this hole and resume my activity? The desire to create was non-existent and required extra effort every day. I told myself: to get out of this, my best medicine was to feed my passion. And little by little I resumed collage. Personally, I like to create with my hands, I love it! I also continue to attend classes at the Municipal School of Fine Arts. I encourage you to practice the collage technique, it is a very rewarding experience!”
ELISA BARBERÁ ACEVEDO
For me, collage is a one-way trip with no return. This medium gives me authentic creative freedom and a commitment to society by expressing my views on various aspects of life. Through my work, I try to convey important messages, dispel negative thoughts, and artistically materialize my vision of the world. Collage is therapeutic, I recommend it!”
SUSANA HERRLEIN
"My relationship with collage goes back thirteen or fourteen years, when I started making notebooks with newspaper and magazine clippings painted with acrylic or watercolor, but in February 2021 I started following Instagram accounts that made collages, I attended an online workshop by María Salan aka "niñapajaro" that I loved. On February 1st I started the @februllage challenge (a collage every day) with a different theme every day. At that time I was living with my children, one with Asperger's syndrome and the other with attention deficit disorder. Although they were and still are adults, daily life is complicated and I alternated it with taking care of my mother with Alzheimer's, who had been in a nursing home for 4 years. We had suffered a lot (my sister and I) because during the pandemic they did not let us see her and she had COVID with fever and overcame it. So the moments in which I made collages served as therapy when I left work... or returned from visiting my mother... or had a fight with my "I also found a group of people who made collages in my city and they met at the Navarre Photographic and Cinematographic Association. It was a way for me to escape, to meet new people. I started going to art fairs to exhibit individually and collectively, and that's how I got here. I'm still in the group, I give classes in a place that my partner and I bought, and at the end of 2021 my mother died and collage helped me to grieve.”
ANA CASTRO
"Making collages began as an innocent game in my life. I could never have imagined that it would be a revolution, that it would mark a before and after. I always made small collages in my notebooks (I am a writer), what I always tried to do was to represent the images that surrounded my mind, or simply to play with the cuttings. At the beginning of 2020, when the pandemic was declared, I was speechless. I couldn't write, I couldn't read. So I looked for my embroidery scissors and old magazines I had inherited from my grandparents and started making collages. Almost automatically and without looking at the clock, which kept passing and with it the days. During 2020 and 2021 I made one or two collages a day. I couldn't stop. For me it was a way of writing. Without knowing it (as I can say today), it was my way of resisting uncertainty and pain. Collage allowed me to discover myself, to know that I had a lot to let out into the world and to be surprised by what the world gave me. Today, I can't imagine myself without writing and making collages, and I invite more people to discover them through my workshops.”
Eliana Ramponi
"Everything started with the need to feel stability; the fascination with the publishing world and the exhaustive collection of interesting postcards and posters led me to discover that I could channel all this psychosomatic phenomenon into something as exciting as analog collage. Looking at a photo I like and adapting it to a completely different situation was a fascinating experiment that allowed me to express my ideas in a very free, comfortable and fun way. Cutting and pasting was the best therapy and the best way to express myself freely. Experimenting with analog collage at that time allowed me to identify more with the process, because like a collage, I felt fragmented at that time in my life. The idea arose to turn this wonderful technique into a project that would allow me to occupy my mind and at the same time re-enter the world of social networking after an absence of three years. The Purple Witch Project grew anonymously for a long time, and sharing the cathartic exercise I was doing allowed me to meet many people who also used this technique therapeutically. For me, it is very important to teach emotional expression through art, because it is a way to express and transmit a message to the new generations, using the artistic resources we have at our disposal".
alicia miranda romero
"At first I didn't know what a collage was, much less that it could be art. As a teenager, the white walls of my room made me feel uncomfortable, the color gave me a feeling of something sterile that only accentuated the feeling of loneliness of that stage. One day I took some newspapers and magazines and began to arrange them in all the empty spaces of the place, and I felt that the place was closer to my thoughts. Although it was an intermittent practice, I resumed it in November 2023, after a break of almost five years. It was strange to return to "playing" with images. It was a reunion with something familiar that reappeared at a time of great frustration of not being able to create, mostly related to the fear of venturing into something that interests you, but not having the "knowledge" to support your creation. Now I live it as an absorbing space, perfect for silencing (temporarily now!) insecurities and self-criticism. It is a place of fluid creation, because from existing pieces it is easier to take the first step to activate yourself, and that so often distances us from the things we love".
valeria ballesteros