Transforming Noise and Holding Space

Zippora Elders: I’m grateful and happy to sit here with you for the final hours of her0. The presentation at the Gropius Bau started in November 2023 with the performance Motherboards and ended with the performance Letters to Omer in January 2024. What was it like for you to perform in this historic building in the middle of Berlin, at this moment?

Selma Selman: I feel very humbled and emotional. This is the last day of this presentation and, for me, it was the biggest challenge ever. It was amazing to work with this kind of institution, but also very challenging. I came to Berlin on the 7th of October when the war started and I was, to be honest, emotionally destroyed. Still, I had to keep up with making the work and thinking about what’s next – what to expect from myself, what people are going to expect from me. I decided that I’m just going to do something that I believe is a good thing, that I believe is saying something about humanity, that I believe is about what we have in common, about something that can be communicated to many of us. That’s why, for me personally, this presentation was not meant to be only for the rich white supremacy; for people from the West. It’s meant for everyone to communicate with, to say things to. In my humble opinion, I do have a lot of things to say, and I do like to communicate with different kinds of people. So thank you, Zippora and your project team, for everything. It’s my honour to work with you. Thank you for your trust.

Elders: It is indeed a very emotional time, and a very tense moment in Berlin. At the same time, we have been talking about Berlin as a centre for the global art field. You told me that, from early on, you always wanted to be or do something here. The idea for the work Satellite Dish came out of that. Would you like to speak a bit about the work and the sentence it includes?

Elders: When you talk about topics like displacement, belonging and migration, it also often comes back to your family. Your family members always return in your practice and in how you talk about it. Your father, your brother and your neighbour are part of the Motherboards performance, and you just went to Bosnia to make a work with your mother. I remember the first time we talked, we did a virtual studio visit because it was the beginning of the Covid pandemic. We talked about your mother and about how you facilitated her getting legal status as a Bosnian citizen so she could travel, but then we had to abruptly stop the studio visit because your dad suddenly got sick. At that point, I felt I was so close to your personal life. For the curator in me, it was very insightful, but also a bit confusing – in a beautiful way – to be immediately so close. It made me wonder: what are we even doing working together as curators and artists if an artist comes from such a close family bond? In your performance, you said a couple of times: ‘My mother always said: you’ll be stronger and more powerful and richer than any man you will ever love’. You have even called your mom your professor.

Selman: She’s also very critical. She would never come here because this is shit for her. (laughs) I beg her to put my paintings on the wall. She doesn’t want that. She buys things in a Chinese store and puts that on the wall. But my father is a genius, you know.

Elders: He also was a seller of your paintings.

Selman: Yes, I’ve worked with my father since I was 17. He was my manager when I was operating as a commercial artist. I do have a nice relationship with my family, but it wasn’t always like that. We live in a patriarchal world, and as a woman, you have to fight through all these layers of patriarchy. I had to prove that I can be as strong as a man. That’s why I have both masculinity and femininity in me. That’s how I grew up. My role model when I was young was my father. But once I learned what it means to be a strong woman, my mom became my role model, so that shifted.

Elders: Yes, I’m very interested in this power of transformation in your work. In your practice, we witness how you make what you find on the scrapyards into art; how you bring dirt into the museum as a huge, monumental object – almost like a work by a male, American Abstract Expressionist painter – and exhibit it here, in the gallery space. I often thought about this force of transformation when we were making this presentation, which was supposed to be a one-time performance. Then, we thought about how we wanted to show all elements of your practice in these amazing spaces: all the disciplines, all the approaches, all the ways of working. It’s sculpture, it’s painting, it’s drawing, it’s video, it’s documentary. And, of course, it’s very performative as well. It’s so much. Your mother’s and father’s practices are here, too, in a way; your work evokes how they survive and how their labour lives on in an exclusive, elitist art space. How do you think about it?

Selman: When I think of my work and the process of making my work, transformation is quite a big thing. That’s why I don’t call myself a ‘performer’. I’d rather call myself a transformer, because segmental transformations are something that I use. For example, everything you see in the exhibition hall also includes the layers of the process of the work. First, I do research and try to find what could happen next. For example, the work leading up to Motherboards was actually the culmination of a two-year research project. I had started the research with my father after we had come to an agreement about what I would do next. After that, I started to work with scientists and chemists to experiment more and to see what I could recycle from computers and their central processing units, particularly for Motherboards. Then I found out that we can recycle gold – but it was very important for me to do it in a non-toxic way. I could say that I found a procedure, which is secret now, but I’m going to share it with those who should know about it. The transformative element in this whole concept is the golden nail, which is hammered into the wall of the exhibition space. It’s kind of lonely there, but I wanted it to be like that, because it’s gold. When we think of gold, we think about something that is so exotic and so important – it’s the object of desire. That’s why I wanted to put it there on its own: to create a contrast. I’m putting this [the installation Motherboards] more in the centre of attention than the gold. That’s how I like to play with objects: it’s the transformation of the objects, but it’s also the transformation of the human beings themselves.

Elders: You also once mentioned that Roma people understood sustainability before recycling became a common thing.

Selman: Well, Roma people started recycling not only metal, but all kinds of things, hundreds of years ago. I think it’s so powerful, because you recycle, but you also make living from that. White, Western society only started to do that recently. How can one say that Roma people are not futurists? You know, I actually have a question for you. For me, when working with a curator, it is very important that we find common ground and that we communicate. I need to feel that I have the freedom to propose and do whatever I want, but I can also trust your process and your way of working. Remember when you told me that we should put the painting dirt high up? That was really the best idea about what could happen in this show. So, I wanted to ask you, you knowing my background, knowing my statements, knowing that I can be kind of easy-going to work with, but also that I won’t sign off on certain things – how was it for you to work with me? Knowing all these layers and deciding how you’re going to position me. How was your experience? It doesn’t have to be positive. (laughs)

Selman: I studied painting in Banja Luka; it was my first profession. The bathtub is actually my first nude. That’s why you cannot take photos. It’s a very special work for me, to be honest. I remember when my father was here, I asked everyone to cover it. I felt under pressure. For me, it’s freedom. In Roma culture, you will never see a naked woman. At the same time, I was very much interested in how I can try to revive Ophelia [1]. The bathtub is the last thing that you see when you walk through her0. You see me as someone who is awake and free, but also full of shame. When it comes to my work in general, I’m not here to send statements or messages that are needed to read or understand my work. I think of it more open and more freely because that’s what art is for; that’s why we make art. You can come and communicate with my work and interpret it in as many ways as you want. I’m just here to give you starting points. That’s why I really like that you didn’t include a lot of text in the exhibition: to be honest, when I go to shows and there are these big texts, I hardly read them. I like to kind of go with the flow with my work.

Elders: I think that your generous approach really speaks to a lot of audiences. You literally take the room, you make noise and you hold the space for those normally pushed aside. In your practice, you also do that with your foundation [2] – you hold space for different thoughts, other voices and extra voices. You reserve a seat at the table, and by claiming your seat, you also give an example. I wanted to amplify your presence and what it stands for. You even once said: ‘I need to be a model, I cannot fail’. So, this idea of the her0 spelled with the zero – what does it relate to?

Selman: I was thinking about zero as a potential for something. I made it by putting the white canvas in my father’s van. When my father would go to collect scrap metal, he would put the scrap directly onto the canvas to hold it. So, I was protecting the van, but I was also making a spontaneous painting, which is abstract. That’s something that I really enjoy in these moments – the fact that something happens in a context without meaning or expectations and then from this – from ‘nothing’ – you get something enormous. It’s the same work that I did for the exhibition – it can be her0, but it can also be nothing. But there’s me in both. And not only me: it’s all of us.

Selman: I’m just having an insight. People sometimes approach my work like it’s garbage and hit it with their foot and shoe. But I’m the only one who has the right to do that, right? I’m the only one who can make a hole in my painting. I’m the only one who can say that that’s garbage, but I expect people to consider it art. Because it is. The same goes for the people I belong to. I’m the only one who can call myself a ‘gypsy’. Someone else is not allowed to. I’m thinking about when people will finally understand to not use ‘gypsy’ as slang, as something positive or negative. When will we finally be considered equal? The same goes for my work, with my paintings. I make paintings, regardless of how I make them.

Elders: I have a memory of this moment when we were all standing here, and we already had a challenge with getting the satellite dish into the building. Then we came with this request for the huge painting, and several people said firmly: ‘This is not possible’. I took you aside and I said: ‘You know what I learned from years of working here [in a German institutional context]? It might be said that it’s not possible, that things are as they are, but at some point, it will actually be seen differently, and be possible, somehow’. And maybe that can be a hopeful note to end on, because in the beginning, you mentioned how things are grim and dark – but let us stay present, open and resilient, and work for transformation, justice and repair.

Zippora Elders is the former Head of the Curatorial Department & Outreach at the Gropius Bau. Previous commitments include Co-Curator of Sonsbeek, Director of Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Founding Curator of The Performance Show at Art Rotterdam, Curator at Foam Museum and Magazine and Curator-in-Training at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, amongst others. As an art historian and writer, Elders has curated a range of solo and group exhibitions and written for several publications. While based in Berlin, she regularly advises, juries and chairs for international organisations and platforms in arts and culture.

Selma Selman, based between Amsterdam, New York and Ružica, Bihać, is a visual artist and activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina and of Romani origin. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2014 from Banja Luka University’s Department of Painting. In 2018, she graduated from Syracuse University, New York with a Master of Fine Arts in Transmedia, Visual and Performing Arts. Selman is the founder of the organisation Get The Heck To School, which aims to empower Romani girls all around the world who face ostracisation from society and poverty.

1 Ophelia is a character in William Shakespeare’s drama Hamlet, who eventually drowns. While Ophelia has been the subject of works by many artists, Sir John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (1851-1852) is particularly well-known.

2 In 2017, Selma Selman established Marš u školu (Get the Heck back to school), a foundation for the continued education of Roma girls.