Selma Selman: Flowers of Life

Rage and Change
Selma Selman’s (b. Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1991; lives and works in Amsterdam and New York) performances, paintings, photographs, and video installations grapple with autobiographical experiences of social stereotyping, racist discrimination, violence, and sexism. It was only a few years ago that Selman made a confident and powerful entry into the international art world. Collaborating with her family, she guts status symbols like a Mercedes Benz to extract the reusable metals. The spoken-word performances of the artist with Romani roots are typically similarly noisy, expressing rage and the urge to turn the distribution of power upside down.

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt mounts a major solo presentation of the artist’s work, including pieces developed especially for the exhibition. An installation consisting of orange peel grabs bearing the poetic title Flowers of Life gestures toward her family’s business—they are scrap metal dealers. The new video Crossing the Blue Bridge, meanwhile, delves into Selman’s mother’s memories of the Bosnian war.

The first monograph on Selma Selman’s work includes essays by Catherine Nichols and Matthias Ulrich, an interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist, texts by Theresa Dettinger, and a foreword by Sebastian Baden.