The first collage gallery in Portugal: how a Ukrainian woman founded reqolle, and why collage is the art of combining the impossible
Collage has traditionally stayed on the margins of art institutions: no museum of its own, no established place in art education, no critical mass of galleries working with it exclusively. Kateryna Voloshyna, founder of Galeria Reqollē, set out to close that gap, and opened the first and only gallery in Portugal dedicated to collage.
Time Out Lisboa wrote about her and the Non-Obvious Connections exhibition: a conversation about her path from digital collages for Elle and Vogue to a space of her own, the absence of collage in art education, and how the art of joining the unjoinable became her life's work.
Collage as a language of unexpected encounters
At the heart of Reqolle Gallery's philosophy is the idea that collage can bring together things that would otherwise never meet. Different textures, eras, contexts and materials, placed in one composition, create new meaning. That is why the exhibition is called Non-Obvious Connections.
Kateryna came to the technique not through academic art, but through digital collages for major media titles such as Elle and Vogue. Her experience with the visual language of glossy magazines gradually grew into her own artistic practice and, eventually, into a gallery project.
Photography: Rita Chantre
After moving from Ukraine, Kateryna founded a collage club, an informal community for people working with cutting and assembling. Over three years, the club grew into a full-fledged gallery with workshops, performances and work by artists from across Europe. Today, Reqolle Gallery is the first and only space in Portugal working systematically with collage: as a medium that deserves an institution of its own, not as a side genre.
In the interview, Voloshyna raises a subject rarely spoken about: collage is barely taught in art schools, and museum collections seldom give it a section of its own. Reqolle Gallery partly fills this gap through workshops, residencies and exhibitions that present collage not as an auxiliary technique, but as an independent artistic language.
Photography: Rita Chantre
The Non-Obvious Connections exhibition
The exhibition brings together work by 24 collage artists living and working in Portugal, a cross-section of the contemporary European collage scene under one roof. It is on view until 24 September.
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