Dangerous Body, 2025

Selma Selman, Dangerous Body, 2025, Oil on metal, 0.1 cm ø 58.6 cm

Since 2014, Selma Selman has used scrap metal to create hybrid works that blur the line between painting and sculpture. Preserving dents, stains, and scratches, she evokes the material’s history and past life, intertwined with her own upbringing, as scrap trade has sustained her family for generations.

By painting on metal, she alters these objects by transforming them into art—often through self-portraiture. Her works challenge notions of status and identity, juxtaposing symbols of luxury with narratives of marginalization. Rooted in her Roma heritage, Selman’s practice reclaims space within an art historical canon that has long excluded voices like hers. In transforming what is discarded, she critiques systems of value and visibility.

Institutionally, her paintings on metal have recently been exhibited at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2025); MoMA PS1, New York (2025); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2024) and Gropius Bau, Berlin (2023), amongst others.

Photo by Marjorie Brunet Plaza