Paper collage, 6 x 4 in.
Mars Ibarreche
Mars Ibarreche works in small formats that feel like fragments of a larger, unseen story. Text, paper, and constructed language are layered until they become tiny mirrors or temporary shrines, holding feelings that might otherwise dissolve back into the day. Collage here is less an image than a state of mind, where reinvention, resourcefulness, and emotional risk rearrange what a life leaves behind.
In the Words of the Artist
Paper collage, 6 x 4 in.
I think my work describes me more than I describe it. It’s very layered, although I am also revealing a depth of emotion that feels very vulnerable. My practice feels meaningful, and that's what I try to give back to it.
Paper collage, 6 x 4 in.
The words usually come from whatever I am feeling on that day or at that time. I feel deeply, and the words help me bring that emotion to the surface. But I also have to find them, literally, I wander in and out of places, collecting pieces and fragments of a story that feels charged somehow, and there's an energy behind it that moves towards certain material.
Collage feels like the right form for me, I see a lot of these pieces like sculptures, there is a breaking down and building up that happens, and they are very layered, like myself. Collage feels like the right form - it's immediate and intuitive, but also about noticing, gathering, and holding onto what otherwise could be lost forever.
Paper collage, 6 x 4 in.
Paper collage, 6 x 4 in.
This series is all 6 x 4 in, and I almost see them as small pieces of the bigger picture. Tiny mirrors, even those that reflect something back to you. I usually tape them to my studio wall as I make them, and the story almost starts to create itself and take on different meanings at different times. Small temples and little shrines.
Paper collage, 6 x 4 in.
Paper collage, 6 x 4 in.
About the Artist
Mars Ibarreche works through text, material, and affect. Using remnants of found language and discarded print matter, Ibarreche constructs intimate topographies of thought – where the tactile becomes a sight of memory, and repair is both gesture and form.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
SHILPA GUPTA (b. 1976, Mumbai) is an Indian artist whose work probes the politics of borders, speech, and belonging through installation, sound, video, and participatory objects.
MICHAEL HENTZ is a New York-based artist and musician who utilizes pop culture and archival images to create mythical portraits and propose new architectural dimensions in the forms of collage and mixed media.
STRETCH BEFORE YOU DIE is the creative home of JOHN HAGERTY, a New York–based art director by day and collagist by night. He splices advertising’s crisp grammar with cut-and-paste intuition to build sharp, resourceful images.
MARTHA ROSLER (b. 1943, Brooklyn) is a pioneering artist and writer whose work spans photography, video, text, and performance. She interrogates the politics of everyday life, from domestic labor and consumer culture to war, media, and urban space.
ANNEKE EUSSEN (b. 1978), is a contemporary artist in fields of drawing, sculpture, photography and installation. Eussen was born in the Netherlands 1978 and currently lives and works in Berlin. Eussen won the Young Artists On The Road Award in 2003 and was nominated with the Parkstad Limburg Prijs 2004.
Out and About
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
▼ READ
Le Nemesiache: Reclaiming Mythological Rituals
This is the first monograph dedicated to the Neapolitan feminist and pacifist artists’ group. Co-founded in 1970 by the multidisciplinary and visionary artist and writer Lina Mangiacapre, Le Nemesiache fostered an experimental artistic practice and a way of being in the world rooted in feminism, mythology, folktales, sci-fi, and radical imagination, while also introducing “transfeminism” in the early ’80s.
▼ READ
What A Girl Wants by Chloe Joe
Teen girls across the U.S. talk candidly about beauty, social media, and self-esteem, revealing how TikTok trends, acne, boyfriends, and “clean girl” aesthetics actually land in their day-to-day lives. Reported by Bustle.
▼ LISTEN
Holy Water by Hether
This 2025 album feels like lo-fi love, where woozy guitars, soft percussion, and doubled vocals stack up until they blur into each other. Holy Water circles the same melodies and phrases with small shifts in tone, turning repetition into longing, perfect for a late night chill out.
