2025-12-12 05:09:20
It’s somehow been more than a year already since we launched Colossal’s new site design, and it’s spectacular to hear your feedback about how you peruse and use the site. Whether you click on things of interest in our newsletters or encourage your students to explore thousands of articles about artists, nature, science, and visual culture, we want you to keep coming back—and learning—again and again. That’s why we’re continuing to build out the Colossal Art Glossary!
This month, we’ve added 10 new entries:
Teachers frequently cite Colossal as a useful classroom resource from K-12 to university settings, and education is one of our core values. To make art more accessible, our glossary aims to help explain and provide examples of some of the most common art-related terms and techniques.
From Afrofuturism to kintsugi to Vincent van Gogh—and a bunch in-between—the list of terms is a constant work in progress. As it grows, we’re increasingly incorporating links to the definitions—and related articles—so they’re easier than ever to discover.
Browse the Art Glossary.
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2025-12-12 00:58:31
From sequins, glass beads, rhinestones, plaster, paint, and more, Jorge Mañes Rubio sculpts new narratives from ancient tales. Drawing on the motifs of Spanish illuminated manuscripts, as well as family heirlooms and pop culture, the artist explores the relationship between past and present, reinterpreting religious imagery into unexpected forms like beaded basketballs and other functional objects.
One recent work, “La Noche que Desvela una Luz sin Medida,” fashions a black safety glove used by motocross racers into a form that evokes a medieval gauntlet. It’s embellished with flame motifs, twisted cord, glass, and tiny medallions that the artist’s great-grandmother collected at monasteries across Europe in the early 20th century. Situated on a handmade pedestal, it’s displayed like an important artifact or relic rather than a utilitarian garment.
“In Spanish, the word desvela carries a double meaning: to uncover, but also to remain awake because of vigilance or devotion, echoing the shimmering details that gleam all across this dark, armoured piece,” Rubio says in a statement. The glove is decorated with beaded flames and rows of colorful rhinestones while also incorporating the Fox Racing logo as a nod to the artist’s love of motocross, which is itself a passion passed down through the generations in his family.
Like many of Rubio’s works, the composition blends time-honored motifs with modern elements. “In this way, two opposite worlds collide: slow, time-consuming hand-embroidery techniques meet fast paced, bold graphics on cushioned protective gear; a motocross glove transformed into a contemporary reliquary.”
Additional pieces in Rubio’s ongoing New Prophets series include a chair with a hand-sculpted frame and a number of beaded reliefs in artist-made frames that reinterpret the aesthetic of medieval painted manuscript pages into glowing contemporary scenes. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Medieval Motifs and Pop Culture Converge in Jorge Mañes Rubio’s Beaded Sculptures appeared first on Colossal.
2025-12-11 05:58:31
For Shuo Hao, finding the proper place is at the heart of her practice. The Chinese artist, who is currently based in Paris, has long been interested in the ancient text Yijing and how it offers a system of understanding for a world perpetually in flux. The cosmological book provides structure through the five elements—earth, water, air, fire, and metal—and also considers the relationships between humans and nature and the order of things, more broadly.
Shuo Hao works with antique furniture, typically sourced from auctions and second-hand shops. Wood worn with age is her preferred material, and most objects she selects date between the 16th and 20th centuries. Like much of her practice, choosing these objects emerges more from intuition rather than a desire for particular physical qualities. Focusing on their surfaces, she paints a paints a panel or door, transforming both prized and forgotten pieces into surreal works.
“Sometimes it’s just a subconscious feeling that a certain arrangement works, and later, upon analyzing the structure of the materials, I find that it indeed does,” she tells Colossal. “So I trust intuition. Everything that comes directly from it feels natural and authentic.”
Describing her process as “a kind of self-repair,” Shuo Hao considers herself in the Jungian tradition—the Swiss psychologist also embraced the teachings of the Yijing—as she gathers and arranges pieces in a way that’s therapeutic. She adds:
I search for the right parts to assemble a work, and each part reflects aspects of my own personality and experiences. When a piece is complete, it feels like an independent and complete personality has emerged, giving a sense of wholeness. I feel my breath flows more freely.
Surreal in content and celestial in color, the paintings feature strange hybrid creatures and often nod to ancient mythmaking. There’s a three-headed dog evocative of the Greek Cerberus, the monstrous being that guards the underworld. Other works feature a sleek, Sphinx-like character lounging on lace, along with ouroboros snakes, disembodied hands, florals, and vessels. Rendered with a distinctive lustrous quality, Shuo Hao’s subject matter tends to conjure moments of transition, and likely, transformation.
Having closed a solo exhibition this fall, Shuo Hao is currently in her own phase of change as she reflects and reorients herself. Some of this occurs through writing, which the artist considers an essential companion to her painting practice. “I write daily—thoughts, stories—and each session gives me a strong feeling of being alive. Writing and painting interact and support each other,” she adds.
Find much more of Shuo Hao’s work on Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Luminous Paintings Conjure Change in Shuo Hao’s Antique Furniture Assemblages appeared first on Colossal.
2025-12-11 02:25:00
Indigo dye, which is derived from Indigofera tinctoria, is deeply connected to craft traditions in cultures where the plant is endemic, such as the tropical regions of Western Africa, the stretch between Tanzania and South Africa, and the Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia.
A laborious process of texturizing and fermentation creates a deep blue dye that continues to be one of the most sought-after natural pigments for textiles and garments. Indigo also fulfills a spiritual and social role in some cultures, like the Yoruba people of Nigeria and Benin or the Manding of Mali, whose dye-makers customarily perform rituals when beginning a new batch.
A product of time and expertise, indigo-dyed garments indicate prosperity, status, and identity. But the material also has a dark legacy as a commodity cultivated by enslaved people, especially in South Carolina, to fulfill the public’s demand for fabrics in the unique color. For Ugandan artist Stacy Gillian Abe, the medium provides the conceptual foundation for an ongoing series of bold figurative paintings.
Currently on view in her solo exhibition, Garden of Blue Whispers at Unit, provocative portrayals of Black women explore cultural heritage, history, gender, and personal memory. Individuals whose skin is a saturated blue signify what Abe calls a new “breed of Black” that “transcends social, cultural, and historical boundaries,” the gallery says, adding that while Abe nods to “a material that defined and confined the Black body through trade and labor, here it is reclaimed and reinterpreted.”
Abe also incorporates delicately embroidered flora and fauna to her canvases, creating textural vines, flowers, birds, and other embellishments. Having learned embroidery from her mother, who in turn learned it from hers, and so on, the artist taps into the way practical mending and crafts are often passed down through generations via women. Abe also commemorates her late grandmother, juxtaposing the personal with the universal.
In acrylic, oil, and thread, the artist renders pensive scenes that recall experiences in her village in Uganda. The women in her paintings commune with the earth; they are relaxed yet attuned as they explore or lounge in the grass, in some cases bearing hooves for feet as if hybridized with their wild surroundings. Some sleep, and others gaze directly at the viewer with piercing recognition.
“By delicately hand-stitching silk thread directly onto the canvas, the artist transforms this domestic ritual into a meditative dialogue on the position of the Black woman’s body within painterly space,” Unit says. “The canvas becomes a site of refuge—an imagined garden—where her figures can exist freely, unbound by the world’s constraints.”
Garden of Blue Whispers continues through January 31 in London. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Stacy Gillian Abe’s Vivid Paintings Nod to Memory, Craft, and Lineage appeared first on Colossal.
2025-12-11 00:44:55
If there’s a feeling that could sum up the whiplash of living online and off, it might be cognitive dissonance. This deep sense of unease emerges when our actions and beliefs don’t align or when something we’d previously thought true is proven false. Psychology tells us that the constructive way to deal with this unwanted feeling is to incorporate the new information into our lives, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist or continuing to believe something inaccurate.
In an era of AI slop and conspiracy theories ruling the highest levels of government, cognitive dissonance will likely be a fixture of contemporary life for the foreseeable future. It’s also an apt title for a new body of work by Los Angeles-based artist Seonna Hong opening this month at Hashimoto Contemporary.
Hong, whose work in television and feature animation has won her an Emmy, is best known for her layered, autobiographical paintings. Abstract landscapes emerge through visible brushstrokes sweeping across the canvas, with tiny rainbows and spindly, barren trees dotting the scenes. The artist always adds figures last, rendering them in plain, monochromatic dresses with no discernible facial features.
In this new body of work, we witness tender moments of care and reciprocity amid environments riddled by unknown disasters. Hong frequently cites the growing threat of the climate crisis as a central point of her practice, and while environmental collapse is present in these new pieces, the artist also touches on the political situation in the U.S. and global struggles for life and dignity.
“The Collision of Truths” and “Laotong” both feature women with clenched fists that signal a clear desire to fight, while other paintings portray a sense of community and compassion. “Eudaimonia,” for example, depicts a trio holding hands while climbing a steep, slippery incline. The title is an ancient Greek word that means the “highest human good,” a concept that seems to ground much of Hong’s new work.
Like earlier paintings, those in Cognitive Dissonance play with contradictions: abstraction and figuration, the temporary and enduring, and desolation and care. But where Hong has previously presented environments as both keepers of memory and endless sites of possibility, these pieces feel more urgent, suggesting that when loss and hardship are omnipresent, we’ll need to rely on our bonds with each other to carry us through.
Cognitive Dissonance runs from December 13 to January 10 in New York. Follow Hong’s work on Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Seonna Hong’s Tender Paintings Navigate Contradiction with Care appeared first on Colossal.
2025-12-10 01:00:00
Nestled amid an established row of houses in a rural Vietnam community, a brick structure called Nang House by Trung Tran Studio creates an airy, earthy dwelling for a three-generation household. Encompassing mature trees into the design, including notches in rooflines to accommodate the trunks, a natural canopy spills over a courtyard garden where indoor and outdoor spaces converge.
The interior spaces embrace high wooden ceilings, irregular angles, and curved details that highlight the angularity and modularity of the building material. Through contemporary forms, a timeless building block transforms into a warm, welcoming home. (via archdaily)
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Trung Tran Studio Incorporates Mature Trees into a Warm Brick Home in Vietnam appeared first on Colossal.