SELENA KIMBALL
MY WORK BEGINS WITH ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS (ILLUSTRATED HISTORIES, NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS) AND DEVELOPS INTO IMAGINED RECKONINGS WITH THE HISTORY THEY REPRESENT. HISTORY, FROM HERODOTUS ONWARDS, HAS BEEN PART FACT, PART FICTION. MY WORK EXPLORES THIS IN-BETWEEN PLACE, TO TROUBLE THE AUTHORITY OF VISUAL HISTORIES AND IMAGINE ANOTHER KIND OF EXPERIENCE.
From the series Atlas of Air
(2020-present)
“Atlas of Air” begins with the simple tools of a knife and glue. This ongoing photomontage series (2020-present) involves meticulously cutting and collecting “empty” spaces within front-page photographs of The New York Times newspaper. These fragments are mostly nondescript background skies in otherwise visually charged photographs depicting the effects of drought, fire, war or other catastrophic events. The air around us and between us and above our heads is often not noticed and so it becomes a kind of “blank”, a terra incognita. Kimball’s slow durational collage practice is a way of making sense of the strangeness of time and attention, and the positive potential of “nothing”.
Untitled Times, sec. 06 (dome), 2022
Unique hand-pulled CMYK silkscreen
63 x 76 1/2 x 2 inches (160 x 194.3 x 5.1 cm)
Ulterior Gallery

NY, NY
Selena Kimball has dedicated the last seven years to developing a new body of work, creating collages from fragments of the New York Times newspaper. Her exhibition at Ulterior Gallery draws inspiration from the Jefferson Bible, which Kimball considers the earliest American cut-up. Kimball critically examines the daily news stream through her practice, unveiling a dialogue between the present and constructed historical narratives. Her process involves meticulous collages using newspaper, which are then transformed into silkscreen paintings on linen. We met to discuss her exhibition, examining her creative process, the use of collage, and the impact on her work of miracles and historical narratives.
—Anton Ginzburg
New Publication:
II – Catalogue of Correspondence, Inventory number 1915.02.0014p
Images by Selena Kimball Words by Alyssa Grossman
A Collection of Rocks found in the Gothenburg Museum of World Culture

Anna didn’t have a chance to gather the list of rocks I had emailed her this time, so she told me we could go through the storage area and look for them together once I arrived at the archive. It takes time to search for these things. There is a massive amount of stuff on those shelves. If you were to see a selection of these rocks displayed behind glass in an exhibition, they probably would come across as anonymous and boring. But when you start searching for a particular rock, even if it’s just a matter of trying to read the catalogue numbers written in tiny spider scrawl on its side, it becomes curious and compelling. 


And then after you spend ten or fifteen minutes inspecting it, turning it over in your hand, trying to find words that will render its shapes and forms imaginable to someone else, it becomes familiar, in a way. You develop a relationship to it, and this relationship gives it a new meaning. Now whenever I come across a photograph in the online catalogue of one of the rocks I have retrieved from storage and studied, I feel a wave of recognition, like I am seeing the face of someone I know.

—Field notes, 18 October
Selected Projects:
Unique hand-pulled CMYK silkscreen on linen, plaster, and oil on panel
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Untitled Times (Chandelier), corner Triptych, each 63.25 x 39.25 inches, silkscreen and acrylic on linen
Hymnal, 18 x 12 x 3 inches, silkscreen, plaster, wood, “The Polish-American system of Chronology” by Elizabeth Peabody (1849)
Untitled Times, sec. 05 (flock), 63 x 168 x 1 1/4 inches, Unique hand-pulled CMYK silkscreen on linen, four panels
Ah, Ah (Ha, Ha), 51 1/2 x 36 x 76 inches, silkscreen, plaster, wood, oil paint, Thomas Jefferson’s bible (First Edition, 1904)
Mapping Night Vision #1/ 75 x 48 x 24 inches , aluminum tacks, inkjet prints on glossy paper, foam, wood
Night Vision, installation view/ 90 x 95 x 10 inches, aluminum tacks, inkjet prints on glossy paper, foam, wood