Selma Selman

Selma Selman (b. 1991) is 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 with a Master of Fine Arts in Transmedia, Visual and Performing Arts. Selman currently lives and works in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and New Yοrk, USA.

In her art works, the ultimate aim is to protect and enable female bodies and enact across-scalar approach to collective self-emancipation of oppressed women. Selman’s search for functional, contemporary political resistance stems from her personal experience with oppression from various directions and in different scales. Selman is also the founder of the organization “Get The Heck To School” which aims to empower Roma girls around the world who have faced social ostracization and poverty.

In 2014, Selman was the recipient of the ZVONO Award, given to young artists in Bosnia. She also participated in Tania Bruguera’s “Arte Util” workshop as part of Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in 2013. In 2017, Selman was awarded the “Trieste Contemporanea” Award (Trieste, Italy). In 2018, she was nominated for “Forbes 30 Under 30: Art and Style”. In 2019, she was the winner of the White Aphroid Award (Maribor, Slovenia), as well as the winner of the Power of Excellence Award by the Association Business Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Grazia Magazine (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina). Selman’s works have been exhibited at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (2020); L'Onde Théâtre Centre d'art, Vélizy-Villacoublay, France (2020); 58th Venice Biennale, Italy (2019); Queens Museum, New Yοrk, USA (2019); Villa Romana, Florence, Italy (2019); The Creative Time Summit, Miami, USA (2018); 3. Berliner Herbstsalon, Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin, Germany (2017); acb Gallery, Budapest, Hungary (2017); agnès b. Galerie Boutique, New Yοrk, USA (2017); Good Children Gallery, New Orleans, USA (2016); Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina (2014), amongst others.

Selma Selman is a participant of the Onassis AiR Emergency Fellowships program 2020-21.

My approach to, and passion for, art and teaching are deeply informed by my personal experiences and coming of age during the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995. During the war, my family and the peοple of my hometown Bihać, spent three-and-a-half years under siege, with no electricity or regular food supplies. In my memories of those times, pictures of violence, destruction, and displacement are intertwined with the reminiscences of friendship, family support, and neighbors cooking together. These experiences of war and postwar devastation were deepened by the fact that I belong to one of Europe’s most marginalized cοmmunities—the Roma. As a Roma woman, I embody an intersection of several identities—ethnic, gender, and linguistic—which position me extremely unfavorably in relation to power.

Through the support of the Onassis ΑiR Emergency Fellowship, I plan to continue my research on a new project tentatively titled “We, Who Are Dreaming Of”. The project will use immersive photographic and image technologies to record, make lucid, and reconcile dreams and realities for refugees—those who have lived through, in spite of, and against war. In order to delve into these processes, I use ‘affective forecasting’ to understand the way in which peοple, especially refugees, remember their feelings of past events and relate to future ones.