Vivian Selbo’s work revolves around societal critique made visible via conceptual digital photography of quotidian scenes.
Selbo examines ambiguity in information and information in ambiguity, employing chance, repetition, and pattern-matching to debunk any notion of neutrality in a visual point of view.
Her work frequently engages anomalies in digital photography’s language, so-called malfunction and glitch in its algorithms and the output of its processor, to critique a range of topics, in particular the environment, advertising, social capital, technology, and gender.
Her Instagram handle — @Involvebias — is an anagram of her name.
Selbo has work in The Walker Art Center’s Digital Arts Study Collection and SFMOMA. She received an Emerging Artists/Emergent Medium grant from the Jerome Foundation, and was a finalist in South by Southwest’s Interactive Art category. Selbo has exhibited at The Institute of Contemporary Art New Media Centre, London, The Walker Art Center, Maryland Institute College of Art, Artists Space, New York, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, ada’web, artincontext.com, and Slate.com.
Born in 1958, Selbo attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Studio Program (1988-1989) and holds a B.S. in Art from the Univ. of WI, Madison (1983), where she is from originally. She lives and works in Brooklyn.