Lina Selander: Working Archive
Lina Selander’s Working Archive (2015) is a custom-built display case containing images, fossils, a radioactive stone, an ancient coin, publications, documents, photographs, and a film. The work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2015 together with six other works by Selander and is representative of her investigative artistic practice, in which history, science, and image-making intersect.
The work, which is part of the SSE Permanent Collection and displayed in the corridor outside the President’s Office, consists of a specially constructed light table in the form of a glass display case made of steel, glass, and wood.
Inside the case, a collection of objects and visual material is presented, including radiographs, plant fossils, a radioactive stone, optical elements, publications, documents, and 140 C-prints from the film Anteroom of the Real. The film, an essayistic video work by Selander, is also shown on an iPad within the installation.
Much of the visual material originates from the exclusion zone surrounding Chernobyl. Through layered combinations of images, documents, and archival material, the work explores how reality is understood, recorded, and represented through images.
Among the objects is an ancient coin depicting the extinct medicinal plant silphium, a species that was highly valued in antiquity and is believed to have disappeared due to overexploitation. Also included are radiographic images created by Selander using uranium-containing stones. By placing the stones in light-tight boxes for several weeks, she allowed radioactivity to interact directly with photographic paper, producing images that were later developed by the artist.
These radiographs can be understood as physical traces of reality, much like the fossils displayed in the case. Together, they connect different forms of evidence across vastly different timescales.
By bringing these materials together within a single display case, Selander investigates the concept of time. The work juxtaposes geological timescales spanning millions of years with moments of historical rupture and the temporal structure of film itself.
Working Archive also explores the boundary between archive, document, and artwork. By presenting scientific objects and archival materials within an artistic context, Selander challenges distinctions between fact, image, memory, and narrative.
Donation by Lena and Per Josefsson.