My whole life I worked in newspapers. There was a dark storage room in Tambov Courier editorial office with piles and piles of weekly issues. Floor-to-ceiling rows of A3 trash. Typography excess - two years archive. Headlines and news columns rotting unattended, unopened. I was a 17 years old reporter with an ambition of a photographer, even artist perhaps, and I sneaked into that room once. I had a camera on a tripod with me. I’ve heard a mouse rustling some pages. It smelled like dry bread and instant coffee. I had a vision of myself positioned comfortably on top of the Archive Paper Giant.

Alëna Adamson in Tambov Courier newspaper archive room, 2006

That’s how I began my affair with printed words doomed for an infinite storage incarceration. Perhaps, that’s why yesterday I made this collage. I used a front page of New York City oldest tabloid, I selected juicy headlines meanings and splashed some acrylic paint on a canvas. In addition to all that, I decided to add “Alënka” soviet chocolates candy wrappers (I got them in a russian grocery store in Manhattan’s uptown).

Alëna Adamson creates her first collage with New York Post newspaper headlines

I went through hundreds of articles, creepy news and crime reports published in the newspaper. I checked out mugshots and celebrity galleries, I remembered Andy Warhol - he loved tabloids and copied front pages obsessively, with a pencil.

I’m not here for the pencils. I like cut-outs and neon paints. I see these headlines as a part of my identity now. They are reminders of my days working there. They are memories of loud newsroom talks. They are my emotions experienced on a day of the paper release. And it’s all saved in print and released to the public.

I glue them onto canvases and tell my own tales. I feel so seen.