Selma Selman: her0
The Gropius Bau is delighted to announce her0, a presentation of works by artist Selma Selman. her0 commences with an opening performance on 11 November from 15:30 to 18:00 and expands into the subsequent rooms from 11 November 2023 to 14 January 2024. Admission to the presentation is free throughout its duration.
“In the 21st century, I believe the Roma are the planet’s leading social, ecological and technological futurists. For roughly 100 years, we have been recycling waste to self-sustain as an oppressed minority within Western modernity – which is just now realising the moral, socio-economic and ecological value of such a practice.”
— Selma Selman
Selma Selman’s practice stems from her personal experience investigating notions of oppression, patriarchy, women’s rights, desires and the frictions that lie between collective and personal action. Her multidisciplinary approach uses performance, painting, photography and video to dissect the borders of identity, currency, law and the burden of representation placed upon her, her family and her community. A transformative potential, rooted in poetry, is present throughout her oeuvre and lies at the core of her0, which is the first presentation in Berlin providing an overview of Selman’s practice. The title refers to the word “hero”, combining “her” and the number 0 as a potential for change. The entry point of her0 is her evolving performance, Motherboards (2023–ongoing).
The performance involves a process of extraction of gold from scrap metal. Using axes and drills, performers reflect this material act into a musical soundscape, performed with a sound designer and a cellist. Integral to this work is the collaborative labour of her family, members of the Romani community, who together with Selman source the raw material – that to this day sparks desire and destruction – from seemingly worthless e-waste. This act of recycling confronts her family’s economic activity as part of a marginalised group, grappling with violent biases and offering insights into dynamics of power that shape current ideas about sustainability and also reflects on value creation in the art market.
“A cross-section of her artistic practice, her0 brings together formats and concepts specific to Selma Selman’s vigorous approach. Her work alludes very directly to the notion of survival, as an artist, as a woman and as part of a family and community. Selma Selman doesn’t employ the luxury of time; she takes the liberty to dream but parallel to that turns her dream into action, never falling into passivity. At the same time, her practice reflects upon the debate on sustainability and the racialised bias behind who is considered to be sustaining – or to be sustained.”
— Zippora Elders
Subsequently, with the collaborative support of the Romani community, theorists, technicians, chemists, scientists and organisers, she transforms the extracted raw material into one sculptural tool: a golden nail. her0 shows a cross-section of Selman’s oeuvre, merging remnants of Motherboards with a variety of past and new works. It revolves around desire and self-determination, uniting both the pioneering and activist aspects with the functional character of Selman’s approach. The presentation at the Gropius Bau continues with videos, an installation and paintings as well as the newly-produced sculpture Satellite Dish. The smaller scale series Superpositional Intersectionalism (2020–ongoing) and Metal Paintings (2018–ongoing) are interwoven throughout the space, blending boldness with intricate fragility. The video Mercedes Matrix (2019) documents a performance in which Selman and her family dismantle a Mercedes-Benz, thereby revealing the foundation of their long-standing practice centred on deconstruction and reversed exploitation.
The monumental painting Dirt 0 (2021) echoes abstract painting, but is instead created with car waste such as iron dust, dirt and leaking liquid, sourced directly from the loading area of her father’s van. Spread across the exhibition space, the series Metal paintings (2018–ongoing) marks the beginning of Selma Selman’s artistic study exploring the links between metal waste, technology and art. While the planet’s metal has epic origins, originating from a potentially devastating apocalyptic meteor storm 200 million years ago, Selman’s relationship to this material is one of basic survival, having worked in a scrapyard as a teenager. In a playfully humorous way, she combines impressions from her everyday life with references to art history and text collages onto various metal objects.
Six pieces of Mercedes-Benz (2022) evokes delicate body forms that stretch over disassembled parts of a Mercedes car, a symbol of capitalist desire. Arranged like an altar, the cold metal surfaces of what once represented masculine power are softly taken over by long, spider-like limbs and organic shapes. By creating a new anatomy, Selman reanimates this discarded object in a process she calls “undeading”, lifting the distinction between human and machine, subject and object.
Selman’s drawings Superpositional Intersectionalism (2020–ongoing) look to quantum theory to challenge preconceived notions of opposites and contradictions. Desires around belonging and the constant movement and displacement of bodies are central to the sculpture Satellite Dish (2023), shown for the first time at the Gropius Bau, which refers to longing, distance, connection and time.
As part of the Gropius Bau’s freely accessible fall and winter programme, her0 concludes with Letters to Omer (2021) a lyric performance in which Selma Selman addresses her intimate feelings and desires to a fictional character named Omer. Narratives about femininity, sexuality and patriarchy intermingle with visions of a better world.
Curated by Zippora Elders with the assistance of Monique Machicao y Priemer Ferrufino and Elisa Maria Schmitt
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. She was a resident of Rijksakademie from 2021 to 2023 and exhibited at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin (2023), Autostrada Biennale, Prizren (2023), documenta fifteen, Kassel (2022), Manifesta 14, Prishtina (2022), Kunstraum Innsbruck (2022), MO Museum, Vilnius (2022), Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest (2022), Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel (2021), National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo (2021), acb Galéria, Budapest (2021), Queens Museum, New York (2019), Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin (2017), agnès b. galerie boutique, New York (2017) and 12-14 contemporary, Vienna (2016), amongst others.