Analog collage
8.5 x 11 in.
Rafael Santiago
Rafael Santiago is a Manhattan based artist whose collages excavate the erotic and the sacred, fusing queer bodies with botanical motifs in charged acts of reclamation. Working across collage, photography, drawing, and writing, they construct tender rebellions, fantasies of desire, shame, and spiritual defiance shaped by personal memory. In their ongoing series Queer Interludes, vintage gay erotica is overlaid with floral cutouts, rendering the male nude mysteriously.
In the Words of the Artist
Analog collage
8 x 11 in.
My artistic practice explores queer identity through various mediums such as drawing, collage, photography, and writing. However, I will use any materials to bring an idea to fruition. It is all determined by space, funds, and time. I devote a significant percentage of my time to creating.
My work addresses themes of identity, queer desire, and gender fluidity while challenging traditional narratives. One notable series, "Queer Interludes," merges vintage male-on-male erotic imagery with floral motifs and abstract representations of queer desire. I like to invite viewers to engage deeply with the complexities of identity and sexuality, encouraging contemplation of humanness, passion, and attraction. Through charged imagery, I aim to foster a powerful connection to the diverse experiences and emotions within the queer experience.
Analog collage
8.5 x 11 in.
Yes, my work reclaims and recontextualizes erotic images from the late 1970s and 1980s—images primarily aimed at the sexual gaze of gay men. During this period, gay male sexual acts emerged from hidden spheres into the public eye through age-restricted printed materials and motion pictures. These images were/are encountered by various gazes, including that of oppressors fueled by passed-down, conditioned hate. Images that were further tainted by the birth of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
Sometimes, I wonder why I choose to alter these powerful images. Do I have the right to? Am I inherently connected to them, having grown up identifying as a gay male in this society? Do I seek to emulate my respect for them and declare queerness through my alterations? Might my alterations diminish their power instead? Do I dare appropriate them à la Sherrie Levine?
While pornographic images are designed to stimulate sexual arousal, my goal is to provoke thought while creating a pleasurable visual that captures my lust, longing, frustration, and desires as a queer individual. I like to think that by using and reinterpreting these images, I am contributing to and continuing the queer canon within the art world.
Analog collage, gold leaf
8 x 11 in.
The work is "perfect" in the mind's eye—in reality, it is not, and I wonder if that is exclusively true for artists who can't afford the fabrication of high art. Knowing this, I always leave room for reality to manifest in the outcome of the artwork.
For me, deliberate planning often serves merely as a means to an end. I don't perceive a significant tension between the conceptual and the tactile in these collages, particularly because a dominant aesthetic already exists. I am utilizing it here through color and texture in the final result. The only anticipation I feel lies in merging fixed colors, images, and textures with my more fluid use of lines in the cutout shapes and whether or not they will work together.
Analog collage, gold leaf
8 x 11 in.
I loved the 1991 film The Secret Garden as an early teen and how this special lair spiritually uplifted the lives of its protagonists. I loved that it was a gorgeous place to hide away from others. A garden could be protective. When I learned about the Garden of Eden, around the same time, more or less, I was fascinated by this as a gorgeous, paradise-like, hidden protective realm as well. However, it was tinged with details that sparked fear in me: the deceptive serpent, betrayal, and being thrown out of a gorgeous sheltering garden.
I learned more about concepts of a paradise on earth during a forced religious conversion, where numerous illustrations in their publications portrayed paradise on earth with landscapes of luscious Eden-like gardens promised to be inherited by devout followers only, and where only heterosexuals would be accepted in an eternal dwelling, and all others would be destroyed. I knew I'd be amongst the destructed, and it both frightened and saddened me.
In a lot of my collages, I essentially merge male bodies immersed in or associated with gay sex and botanical elements as a rebellion against those teachings. It is my own private queer fantasy. I was convinced these teachings were actual. During those teen years, one of my favorite tracks from Madonna's Erotica album was Secret Garden. Whenever I work on the Queer Interludes series, I often have her song humming in my mind, if not actually playing on my speakers, because I always recall the lyrics "A petal that isn't torn. A heart that will not harden. A place that I can be born. In my secret garden." These collages present a phantasmagoric vision of my protest.
Analog collage
8.5 x 11 in
Collage is an inspiring artistic technique that transforms through overlapping layers. It is a powerful method, standing boldly on its own or seamlessly intertwining with other mediums. Collage knows no boundaries and exemplifies the clever and resourceful spirit of creativity. It serves as a vibrant impulse for artistic expression. My work is deeply connected to my identity, particularly about queer identity, gender, and sexuality, which can extend to other subthemes or fit within broader themes.
I am a proponent of the readymade and appropriation. While not all of my ideas employ those methods, my collage work often does use appropriation in varying capacities. The materials that attract me are usually many decades old—I admire vintage ephemera. Over the last five years, my collages have focused on found landscape photos from the 1950s and 1960s and explicit male erotica from the 1970s and 1980s. Printed materials from those decades age beautifully, and I try to make that beauty a part of what I create.
Analog collage
8 x 11 in.
About the Artist
Rafael Santiago was born in 1980 in the vibrant city of New York and currently lives and creates artwork in the heart of Manhattan. Their artistic practice compellingly explores queer identity through various mediums, including drawing, collage, photography, and writing. Santiago's work is deeply rooted in themes of identity, queer desire, and the fluidity of gender. They challenge traditional narratives by weaving together personal experiences with broader societal issues.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
PATRICK HAMILTON is an artist who studied art at the University of Chile. His work is characterized by his political interest in the restitution of the social burden that abstractionism and conceptual art have had in the past.
GABRIEL DE LA MORA, born in Mexico City in 1968, is a Mexican artist known for his meticulous and often monochrome artworks created from found, discarded, and obsolete materials.
ENRIQUE GARCIA is an artist working across photography, sculpture, and installation. His photo compositions combine scavenged and appropriated materials to create networks of symbols, recontextualized through scale and juxtaposition.
ANDRÉ KOMATSU, is a Brazilian contemporary artist known for his sculptures and installations that question social and political structures. His works, often composed of reclaimed construction materials, reflect urban dynamics and societal tensions.
KANG SEUNG LEE lives and works in Los Angeles. His practice examines themes of identity, community, and collective memory, frequently addressing the legacy of transnational queer histories as they intersect with art history.
Out and About
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
▼ ATTEND
The Aspen Art Fair, July 29 – August 2
Each summer, collectors and art lovers escape the heat and head to Aspen. Held at the historic Hotel Jerome, the fair gathers galleries from Colorado, New York, L.A., London, Zürich, and beyond.
▼ ATTEND
Collage Night Collective, July 19, 7PM
Collage Night returns, this time at Sunrise Sunset in Bushwick. This free event invites you to gather, cut, paste, and connect. No experience needed, and all materials are provided. Join for an evening of creativity, kindness, and collective joy.
▼ LISTEN
Afternooners by Patrick Cowley
A lush dispatch from the bathhouse ether, where Cowley’s synths shimmer like sweat on tanned shoulders. It’s decadent and delirious, soaked in longing and cruising through vapor trails of ghostly, pulsating synth-disco.
