Selma Selman was born in 1991 in the Roma village of Ružica near Bihać, Bosnia and Herzegovina. After studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Banja Luka, she completed her MFA in Transmedia Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University in New York. Selma Selman is the initiator of the program 'Get the Heck to School', through which she funds scholarships for girls to attend primary school in her hometown of Bihać.
Working across media, the artist engages with performance, painting, drawing, video, and installation. Her work intertwines personal biography with socio-political inquiry, focusing on the lived realities of marginalized communities—always including her own Roma community.
Selma Selman is widely known for her actions. Using axes and power tools, she smashes car wrecks. Her family in Bihać runs such a recycling business. From the salvaged valuable metals, she has fashioned a golden nail. In the performances 'Letters to Omer' addressed to an imaginary friend, she works with her voice, emotions, hopes, and desires, laying bare her despair in the face of patriarchal structures that destroy love and intimacy.
Her practice reflects on the violent past of the Balkans and the Bosnian wars. She plays with stereotypes ascribed to the Roma. Violence and destruction function as powerful sensory impulses. Her self-stylization as the 'Most Dangerous Woman in the World' points to the social and political dimensions of her work.
* 1983 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lives and works in Vienna.
Work: Don't Dream Dreams
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*1962 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lives and works in Sarajevo and Düsseldorf, Germany.
Work: Isola Bella
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*1948 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lives and works in Paris.
Work: THIS COULD BE A PLACE OF HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE
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*1976 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lives and works in Sarajevo and Berlin, Germany.
Work: Behind the Scenes I
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*1980 in Travnik, Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lives and works in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Work: 365 (the image of time) January
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