Caro-Ma Collages

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Caro-Ma

The architecture background of now full-time collage-maker, Caro-Ma (who prefers not disclose her real name), probably accounts for her deft use of scale and perspective in her collages. In one of her pieces, La Nausée, a man in a suit sits kneeled-down in the midst of a highway separated by a train track in between. Cars are driving both ways but it is silent. The man's neck and face blend with the purple sky behind him, or rather is made up of moist strands of spaghetti on a fork. Brain vomit? Probably not. Caro-Ma says that she worked on this piece after re-reading an epistolary novel of the same title by Jean-Paul Sartre. However, the piece only goes as far as making a title-reference with no actual provision of groundwork from the book other than a state of mind. A “Jahn Sood” warns of the book via Goodreads:

“If you are not emotionally stable enough to handle the fact that you might have done nothing but existing, don't read this book. If you are jaded by love don't read this book. If you almost lost your self in desire, don't read this book. Probably nobody should read this book. Then again, if you are like me and obsessed with words and the art that comes from darkness and the study of loneliness, then this is a work of genius. It’s beautifully written, terrifying and intense.”

The last books Caro-Ma read are by Carson McCullers and Kawakami Hiromi. A Parisian, she also agrees that it’s appropriate to say she’s an existentialist as it fits with her way of seeing life. And though she quotes Jean-Luc Godard in defense of her use of pre-existing materials, “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to,” she claims he isn’t her favorite director. Caro-Ma likes filmmakers like Jim Jarmush, David Lynch, Guy Maddin, Béla Tarr, Kim Ki-duk, and Kiarostami.

Caro-Ma's works are mostly digital but she also likes to do the traditional cut and paste sometimes.