SALIM GREEN

Background

Salim Green grew up in Middletown, Connecticut. He completed his BA at Wesleyan University in 2020, where early interests in social theory and experimental art shaped his outlook. Green later moved to Los Angeles, California, to pursue an MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 2024. His time on both coasts, as well as his academic background, inform his approach to contemporary art and his engagement with diverse communities. He was selected as the Sullivan Visiting Artist Fellow at Wesleyan University (2024–2026). Green’s work has been exhibited widely, including solo presentations at SculptureCenter, New York (In Practice: Salim Green, 2023).

Green currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Practice

Green’s practice is notable for its interdisciplinary nature and the use of speculative frameworks, such as the ‘Dark Forest Theory’, to examine how individuals and communities navigate visibility and safety. His practice is marked by a willingness to experiment across media, often creating projects that unfold as networks of installations, performances, publications, and collaborative interventions

The ‘Dark Forest Theory’ is a speculative concept positing that interplanetary civilizations hide from one another for self-preservation, and it is used by Green as a powerful metaphor for relational politics and Black experience. In his art, this theory becomes a lens through which to examine modes of hiding—from surveillance, domination, state power, and the pressures of overexposure.

Green’s multifaceted projects often operate as dispersed networks—‘nodes’ of information and experience—across geographies, institutions, and communities. Rather than presenting art as a singular, complete statement, his practice invites viewers to piece together meaning from partial disclosures and shifting perspectives. Notable is his artist book Dark Forest Theory (2023), an edition of ten, each encased in an aluminum box, synthesising imagery, correspondence, essays, and photo collages. This publication, and the broader project it anchors, extends into diverse media and spaces: installations, banners, soundscapes, and collaborative performances, often in partnership with semi-anonymous contributors.

Green’s work resists easy categorisation, deliberately blurring the boundaries between public and private, visible and hidden. Installations have appeared in formal art spaces and unexpected sites—churches, laundromats, rooftop farms, and even as business cards left on car windows—underscoring his interest in how art circulates and is accessed differently depending on context. At SculptureCenter, for example, his exhibition included a video work addressing family and violence, outdoor pennant banners that both adorned and disrupted the courtyard, and a collaborative soundscape with Teo Halm and the Newark Boys Chorus School.

Selected Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

• In Practice: Salim Green, SculptureCenter, New York, 2023
• Salim at Bellyman, Bellyman, Los Angeles, 2023
• 1 (Phantom), Fábrica 29, Mexico City, 2022

Group Exhibitions

• Paranoid Style, Josh Lilley, 2025
• The Miraculous Arms, François Ghebaly, 2024
• Optogenetics: Controlled by Light, Room 3557, Los Angeles, 2024
• Always Being Relation, Wesleyan University, 2024
• What it Could Be, Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago, 2022

Awards and Residencies

• Sullivan Visiting Artist Fellow, Wesleyan University, 2024–2026
• Elaine Krown Klein Fine Arts Scholarship, 2023
• Helen Frankenthaler Matching Fellowship Award, 2023
• Martha Matthias Denny Scholarship, 2023
• Noteworthy Artist, New American Painting (MFA Edition), 2022
• Chautauqua School of the Visual Arts Emerging Artists Residency, 2021
• Endless Editions’ Copy Shop Residency, 2021

Collections

Green’s works are held in important collections, including those of the Getty Research Institute, The Kinsey Collection, and the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University.

Publications

• Dark Forest Theory, SculptureCenter, New York, 2023
• Dark Forest Theory, Endless Editions, New York, 2021

Salim Green FAQs

Ocula | 2025