Ice-blink  2026

 

The works in Ice-blink are built from thousands of engravings cut from first editions of Elisha Kent Kane's Arctic Explorations (1856), the most widely read illustrated account of the Arctic in its day. Settlers moving west across the continent often carried two books: the Bible and this one. When Franklin's expedition sailed into the ice in 1845, two ships and 129 men, the popular belief in Britain and America was that its crew had found safety in an open sea at the top of the world. Kane's map is blank at its northern edge except for three words: Open Polar Sea.

 

The paper has outlasted the place it describes. The engravers are long dead, the ice they drew has melted, and the polar pack is now approaching the open sea once described as myth. Cutting into these pages lets me lay the evidence of my own hands over someone else's recording. When the collages were finished, I poured gallons of iodine into a trough and lowered each piece into it. Sections came unglued and drooped. Iodine stains paper permanently in the act of trying to heal it.

 

Ice-blink is the white glare on the underside of low clouds that tells a navigator there is ice beyond the horizon.

 

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Solo exhibition, Ulterior Gallery, New York, September 10 – October 17, 2026. Press: Adriana Furlong, "Selena Kimball: Ice-blink," The Brooklyn Rail, October 2026 [link]; Sharon Garbe, "Selena Kimball and the art of mincing words," Two Coats of Paint, September 25, 2026 [link]. Photos: Jason Mandella.