Ophelia’s Awakening, 2024

Selma Selman, Ophelia’s Awakening, 2024; Oil on metal; 43.5 × 22 cm

In 2014, the artist began using scrap metal to produce objects, which oscillate between paintings and sculptures. Dents, stains, and scratches evoke the material’s history and past life. Selman appropriates a medium that has surrounded her since childhood: for generations, the scrap metal trade has been her family’s main livelihood.

Selman’s painting on metal alters the objects; at her hands, former scrap metal is transformed into art – often with art historical references embued in them. Her origins–Selman identifies as having a Roma background–are ever present, providing the “material” with which she inscribes herself into the exclusive canon of art history. Traditionally, this has mainly represented dominant social groups and, for quite a long time, neglected artists such as her in art historiography. Her practice is accordingly characterized by an activist, emancipatory, and avowedly feminist attitude. An old gas cylinder serves as the background for a self-portrait, which she combines with the statement “The Most Dangerous Woman in the World”. If Selman is dangerous, it is because of how she defies structural injustices and the mechanisms of oppression.