Susan Kattas’s collages appropriate and re-vision iconic works of art as well as original compositions.

Susan’s attentive eye for detail appears in her recreations of well-known art. Repurposed and recycled return address labels donated by acquaintances along with decals and commercial self-sticking media form the collage.

Enriching these pieces is Susan’s art history background the informs and offers knowledge about the artists’ personal techniques which she simulates such as impasto, carved marble, gold leaf, loomed weaving, and buon fresco. An example of wet plaster is viewed in My Angel: An Interpretation of Melozzo’s buon fresco (Watch YouTube).

Upon closer inspection of the collages, one views the added text, slogans, symbolic logos that expand the social and political commentary. The American Flag series suggests to be American is inclusive as tiny stickers represent all races and religions thus proclaiming to be American is to be inclusive.

Kattas’s work titled We Are Uyghur reaches around the globe to Xinjiang, China, an “autonomous region” a “non-Han” culture of an ethnic minority people called the Uyghur. This collage premiered in January 2014 in an invitational exhibition titled The 45th Parallel. Xinjiang is on the 45th Parallel or latitude. My work presents visually a socio-political commentary about these oppressed people. Sue’s Interview with the Uyghur Human Rights Project.