Pulp Stiction: Collage as an Act of Resistance

Pulp Stiction opens at Hopkins Hall Gallery on Monday, October 26, and runs through December 11. It's a collage exhibition curated by Emily Morgan, who also works under the name Lovely But Dead, and it brings together nearly 70 works from 26 states and seven countries. The show frames collage as both an art form and a release mechanism, and as an act of resistance: work that engages with political dissent, personal survival, cultural reclamation, grief, rage, community, joy, or the refusal to be erased.

For Morgan, the project grew out of a dark place. She started it after the 2024 election, a period she says only making art brought her out of. Her first piece, Mother of Sorrows, uses rough-edged images of the Virgin Mary torn by hand and splatters of red paint. From there, the show expanded into a national juried exhibition that welcomes collage-adjacent media like mixed media, textile, zine, and digital collage built from found or photographed material. The lineup includes G.E. Vogt, Dayton-area artist Brett Nickell, and Columbus artist Tim Rietenbach, among the dozens of others. Morgan also made sure every selected artist received a stipend, and the gallery takes no commission on sales.

It's not meant to be a comfortable experience. Morgan says the opening line of the exhibition statement is "this is not a nice exhibition," and she pairs that resistance with joy. The show runs from October 26 through December 11 at Hopkins Hall Gallery, The Ohio State University, 128 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210. There's an opening reception on Friday, October 30, from 5 to 8 PM, and gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11 AM to 4 PM. Admission and all programming are free and open to the public.