UPCOMING
Open Studios Amsterdam
12-22nd of May
KRASS Festival, Hamburg, DE
27th & 28th of April 2022
Centrale Fies, Dro, IT
17th - 19th of June 2022
Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest, HU
12th of May - 28th of August 2022
Manifesta 14, Prishtina, XK
22th of July - 30th of October 2022
CURRENT
Kunstraum, Innsbruck, AU
21st of May 2022
Kersgallery, Amsterdam, NL
5th of May 2022
SELECTED WORKS
Platinum
Performance, 2021
Platinum is a multimedia work based on the fact that discarded scrap metal contains a value that society recognizes as exceptional - precious metals, especially platinum, located in car’s catalytic converters. In a multi-week performance, Selman’s team finds the wreckages of cars, prepares them for installation, and delivers them to the gallery. Together with them, the artist mechanically removes the converters and their contents in which dirt and platinum are mixed. In cooperation with a chemical engineer, a complex process of platinum extraction from this content is being carried out. In the end, Selman, in cooperation with a goldsmith, shapes the extracted platinum into a paradoxically doubly "precious" object - a platinum ax. The object is indeed precious for her because it is a tool that is the basis of the work and survival of her family, as well as her own work. But, finally, it is also precious in the way the average spectator sees it - a treasured object like a sculpture or jewelry - even when it is clear that its content is nothing but the presented car waste and the work invested to turn it into value.
Dirt 0
Painting, 2021
The last chapter of the exhibition consists of four monumental canvases entitled Dirt 0. The works, reminiscing masterpieces of modernist painting, were actually created by exposing the canvas to the sediments of iron dust, dirt, and liquids from the transported pieces of iron, car waste in particular. Selman placed the canvas on the floor of her father's transport van with the intention of protecting the vehicle from damage caused by the transported waste. The canvases were replaced with new ones every 2-6 weeks.
Mercedes Matrix
Performance, 2020
Due to the ongoing economic crises of Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is incredibly difficult to organize an adequate income, especially for Roma people due to the lack of education and discrimination - they live without government help.
This integration of art labor and my family’s labor for survival extends into further collaborations and it is useful when the value system crashes, like Bosnian economy.
Together with my family I performed “Mercedes Matrix” where I use art as a tool for transforming the value of an act of labor and art. In this work, art becomes a tool to question the labor of my family and my labor as an artist. The same acts of labor which are performed are simultaneously executed for my own survival as well as being executed by and for the survival of my family.
The mechanism of these artworks transforms the living reality of my parents and the possible function of art, while fusing the work and reward of laborers and artists. My family transforms metal waste into a valuable resource for survival. Their everyday survival is dependent on this exact same labor, where metal and motor are sold in recycling centers.
When this labor is recycled back into the domain of art, it gains value as an artwork, and shows art’s potential to transmute value just as my family transmuted the value of scrap metal as a method of commerce, proving the equal potential for transformative actions in any body.
Section 1 of 6
No Space
Performance, 360 Video, 2019
No Space is a video work that humorously portrays planetary scale issues that are challenging human societies beyond our current capacity to define them. The video work is a chance to envision a present but unknown definition of a we - or a future we - which we could truly define ourselves as belonging to.
Paradoxically using an image of my BIG BODY to claim that there is no space for anyone else, I perform our own increased egocentrism and selfishness that produce the planetary problems we are facing in our time today - a time of wars, migrant crises, ecological and climate changes.
The digital giant challenges how we define physical space and our personal belonging by conceptually claiming all spaces for itself, while taking no physical space.
2 of 6
A Pink Room of Her Own
Installation, Performance, 3D Print, 2020
In this project, I am serving as a lens that focuses on the concrete and significant details of my mother's past, possible and actualized dreams. I worked together with my mother, reconstructing the memories of her desired rooms from the childhood that she never experienced. My mother's childhood was lost due to child marriage at age 13. Her wish/dream was to have a girl’s room. The room was created during an interview with my mother. I drew her room according to real and fictive memories of unrealized dreams and then made a 3D print.
The title of "A Pink Room of Her Own" comes from the book "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf. Although my mom is not writing from the same personal experiences - she personally experiences and desires the same room to live, feel intimacy and freedom.
Video Documentation
3 of 6
Superposition
Performance, 360 Video
In my work “Superposition”, I perform as the trainer, fighter and opponent simultaneously by punching myself, encouraging, defending and attacking myself at the same time. My performance exposes and neutralizes perceived contradictions of identity - allowing audiences to see the fluidity and possibility built -in to all relations, spaces, times and bodies.
With my body and identities as Roma, female and immigrant, I can become anything necessary as the circumstance demands. Similar to the impossible situation which I am performing, I become my own opponent, my trainer and my hero.
Video Documentation
4 of 6
Paintings on Metal
Acrylic on Metal, Variable Dimensions 2018 - Ongoing
My family has depended on converting metal waste into a resource to support the well-being of my family. After being trained in painting - I chose metal waste as my artistic medium in order to question the perceived value and relations between metal waste, technology and art.
Pursuing further research into the matter, I learned that all the metals on the surface of the Earth today emerged from apocalyptic meteor showers 200 million years ago. Every human tool comprised of metals today - from forks to phones - emerged from collisions and chemical reactions that would have wiped out the entire species.
By painting on metal and working with my family to explore its material, social and possibilities - I couple contemporary art’s conceptual tools with the etymological origins of material invention in the word ‘art’.
I have always had a very personal relationship with metal as my family and I have been collecting and recycling it to sustain ourselves since my childhood. My latest paintings on scrap metal portray impressions of everyday life, references to art history and text collages. Humor, wordplay and my incessant probing of the boundaries of art fuse painting and sculpture into small intimate objects.
5 of 6
Superpositional Intersectionalism
Drawings on Paper, Variable Dimensions 2018 - Ongoing
Through my drawings I oppose possible manifestations of “Superpositional Intersectionalism”. My drawings expose and neutralize perceived conceptual oppositions and contradictions - allowing audiences to see the fluidity and possibility built -in to all relations, spaces and times. My drawings visualize different ways of reorganizing identities, bodies and cultures.
Both artistic practices encourage and enable re-evaluation of what is assumed to be unchangeable, impossible or unnegotiable - pointing at the universal indefinition and dream-like nature of the reality we live in.
