Belonging to the camp of people lacking artistic ability, I spend a surprising amount of time indulging in the arts. When I was younger—say early middle school—I had a stint in collage-making. I gorged when leafing through advertisement infographics or the stiffening science magazines. My scissors and I browsed for hours to hunt down the perfectly anagogic “aesthetic” images to add to my cluttering spread. I felt powerful guzzling others’ creations and spitting out “my own” designs. Though I have neither the photography nor painting skills to create, collages made me feel as though I could sculpt a feeling without ever having to create. 

As others may have noticed, I am not alone in my desires: Spotify playlists and digital collages are sweeping Gen Z by storm. Niche playlists are a way to compile fragments of art into an hours-long symphony. Collages patch together the scenes into an entirely new piece. Widespread social media site Pinterest even capitalizes on this fascination. The platform displays images of perfection—woodland scenes, 19th-century room decor, iridescent stickers—and allows the user to click and “pin” the images to digital boards. It’s simple, effective, and, in the right conditions, utterly addicting.

For outsiders, it may seem there is a slight disconnect between the art and the arranger. Here is someone taking cutouts of works, made by another, and merging them into a larger whole. Lacking originality? Perhaps. But the meticulously placed ornamentals require a keen eye and in itself is a respectable art.

Curatorship is likely the best word to describe this practice. Like museum curators, who painstakingly assemble works of art, conduct the necessary research, and display them in a purposeful manner, collages and playlists evoke the same feeling of secondhand creation. We ourselves, though we may claim otherwise, are not originals. Phrases are borrowed, our clothes are (mostly) factory copies. True enough, collages and Pinterest boards end up being detached from the original creator. (This is not meant to endorse copyright infringement. Do keep in mind guidelines when working with published creative property.) 

However, it is honest to the self to file through prior creative works and mince them into palatable bits.  By devouring these palatable bits, we own them. We adopt fragments of others and label them as something that is “a little bit me”. In seeking an emotion or fleeing an undesirable one, what emerges is a nuanced thing: art that has been sought and extracted by us, the curator, only to reemerge whole and renewed. That is the beauty of art.