SELMA SELMAN AND THE ELASTIC FABRIC OF THE SELF
SELMA SELMAN's artistic practice cannot be described as site- or situation-specific; rather, it seems to deal with the self and its constant transformation. May we instead speak of a self-specific practice? What does this mean and how is it expressed in her works?
By Róna KopeczkyFor her solo exhibition at SCHIRN, Selma Selman instills mechanical life into multi-tine grabs to make them open or close like flowers; in a video, she re-enacts the crossing her mother performed during the war in Bosnia on a bridge that was covered with dead bodies; at the height of her own forehead, she drills into the wall a nail coated with the gold she extracted from computers.
Selman’s artistic practice is inspired by her own experiences, daily scenes of Bosnia and the life of her family, revealing by extension the tensions surrounding topics of identity, stereotypes and expectations. The discrimination her community faces, as well as the obstacles she encounters being a woman of Roma origins from Bosnia condensate in her art into questions of labour, value, inequality and segregation. Her works often take the form of harsh and ironic reflections on her position in the whirlpool of global capitalism, sensitive and eerie text-based confessions or disquieting depictions of female body parts elongated in a spidery way. However, in order to understand the complexity of this bold, defiant, singular artistic voice that both embraces and blasts stereotypes with baffling permeability, this definition might be simplistic.
A self-specific practice
Selman’s practice can neither be qualified as site-specific (a practice which relates to the idea of space, takes into account the characteristics of a particular location and develops in close interrelationship with it) nor as situation-specific (a practice which explores and reflects upon a set of circumstances, a state of affairs, and therefore relates to events in time), but – may we say so? – as self-specific. If the term ‘self’ is firstly understood as identity, character, essential qualities, and secondly as a communal, social and biopolitical context in which the self evolves, then ‘self’ does not reduce to a set of innate characteristics and to origin that determines it; It includes acquired qualities, as well as the idea of evolution, imagination, goal and future. In her artistic practice, Selma Selman interweaves both these realms into an elastic fabric that she shapes and wears freely. She both is her present self and her possible future selves in a transformative self-specificity.
“I gave myself value and created myself […] I make my own narratives” – does she say in a video interview from 2022 at the occasion of her solo exhibition at Kunstraum Innsbruck.
Indeed, Selman entitles and considers many of her works as “Self-portraits”, should they take the form of drawings, performances or paintings. These works condense different layers of Selman’s self, allowing us to catch a glimpse of her past experiences, her present situation, her possible or imagined future, and at times, a fictional-realistic blend or superposition of these, which, unlike the comparably self-specific art practice of Joseph Beuys, does not culminate in myth. What links “Self-Portrait I“ (2016), a performance in which she destroys a washing machine with a fire axe in the streets of Rijeka wearing a flowery dress, her painting “I’m a Lady like my Mother“ (2020) in which her own traits and those of her mother indiscernibly melt, and her project “Motherboards“ (2023-ongoing) in which she and male members of her family destroy CPUs to extract their motherboards and ultimately, the gold it contains?
“Motherboards (Golden Nail)“ is a piece pertaining to a multi-layered large-scale project comprising a performance, a video, four portraits painted on Mercedes car hoods, an installation of destroyed computer CPUs and a nail coated with gold. Motherboards are the central parts of computers that connect all other components – processor, memory, hard drive and video card – and therefore act as their “mothers”. Metaphorically, Selman draws a parallel between motherboards and Roma women who, by belonging to men as wives and mothers, remain invisible in society, as motherboards inside computers. These boards are not only a metaphor, they also serve as raw material from which the artist extracted gold with a non-toxic technique she elaborated on the basis of a revived, thousand-year-old process. With the gold obtained from 200 motherboards, Selman coated one nail, as a symbol of Roma women’s essential role in their family, yet invisible social status.
Selma Selman, "Motherboards (A Golden Nail)", 2023. Open Studios, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, Photo: Sander van Wettum, image via neroeditions.com
Selma Selman, "Motherboards", 2023, performance, Krass Kultur Crash Festival, Hamburg. Courtesy: the artist; photo: Mario Ilić, Image via frieze.com