Over the years, Bosnian-born Selma Selman has forged her own path. Moving beyond the boundaries of what it means to succeed in the global art world, her journey reveals the true meaning of transcendence in every aspect of her life and practice.
The moment it dawned on me that the Bosnian-born Selma Selman was heading towards the top stratospheric tiers of the global art scene takes it back to 2023 and the world’s leading art fair – Art Basel. By then she had already architectured an impressive trajectory mirroring institutional clout, including participation in defining contexts like documenta fifteen and Manifesta 14. However, a full-blown art “star” is only born, or blossoms, when an artist sees the envious cross-over and overlap between the institutional realm and the art market. Showing the six-part sculptural painting installation “Mercedes Benz”, based on dismantled parts of said car, certainly had people talking. Trusted confidantes in unison were dispensing in my DMs that this was the standout moment of the fair. Next thing you knew it was announced that none less than Moderna Museet had acquired it for its permanent collection. It was frankly as surprising as it was a refreshing display of action on the part of the museum.
This spring and summer unfold a strong local presence for Selman in the upcoming high-profile group exhibition “House of Nisaba” at Moderna Museet and later at the annual summer exhibition Avesta Art. When we ask her, for the purpose of this interview, what this issue’s theme means to her, she answers without fuss: “I have lived the theme of transcendence all my life. It is very tiring.”
Dismantling and destruction of domestic appliances were present already in earlier works. These gestures were layered. The washing machine, for example, was “associated with the enslaving of housewives for more than a century,” yet breaking it apart also produced “a moment of catharsis when I could ease the inner tensions that both destroy and construct me.”
Machines fascinate and frighten her in equal measure. “I am fascinated by technology and machines – I am also scared of them.” The scale of certain objects can trigger panic. “Sometimes when I see a big object I get panic attacks like planes and big ships or big machines for underground deconstruction, but I also love all these objects.”
Adopting a recycling approach has long been a staple. “My family has depended on converting metal waste into a resource to support the well-being of my family. I am utilizing this very same labor by showcasing working bodies earning a living through the realm of contemporary art.” What for some might be read as symbolic gesture is for Selman a continuation of lived labor. For more than six years she has developed performances that integrate “the physical skills that I and my family used to deconstruct machines to recycle their scrap metal.”
Her childhood prepared her for the world and organically led to artistic expression. “I was born in the cruellest month of the year, February, the winter of 1991,” she tells me. “From what my mother told me, it snowed so much, maybe that’s why my soul has always been a bit cold.” The village she grew up in, she describes as “a place to be, to teach you all secrets about life and prepare you how to have nothing and have everything.”
She was, by her own account, “wild.” Charcoal was the thing that would calm her. “I used to draw all the time on the streets with it. I loved to be outside to fight with boys and to eat at neighbours’ houses.” She was loved, she says, “even though I caused a lot of trouble.” But she was also alone. With older siblings who had grown up and moved on, “no one wanted to play with me anymore.” She invented imaginary friends. “I remember that I had a small ship with which I spoke all the time, and my family thought that I had problems with the vision.”
“I loved and hated my childhood,” she reflects. “Now if you ask me, I would never go back to that time.”
Family remains inseparable from her work. The collaboration, she explains, was never a grand artistic strategy but a practical arrangement born of necessity. “They wanted to help me with my work so my life could be easier, and I wanted to help them financially, so we made a deal.” Over time, everything has shifted. “We all changed because we had to – nothing should stay the same.” With greater visibility has come greater caution. “We now have more work and less time, but we think more carefully with whom to work and with whom not to.”
Of her family’s rapport with her work, she concludes: “My family is the only who wants all the best for me so I am very happy to have their support.” They may not always understand the art world. “Sometimes they do not understand what I do but that does not mean they do not believe in what I do.”
The core of her process, she says, centres around synthesizing the improvised material practices that sustain her family with the practices and concepts of art. When she was first trained in traditional portrait painting, she redirected that training toward the materials of survival. “I applied my painting skills to paint on pieces of scrap metal that my family continues to collect to survive.”
“Art for me was always a tool for communication – it served for my own freedom and change,” she says. Whether it changes others, she leaves open: “I hope it has influenced someone else as well.” Yet she is clear-eyed about the structures she operates within. “It is hard to bring real changes within art because the art world is a big cartel. If you do not know how to play a game, you have already lost.” Her advice to younger female artists is delivered without softness: “Being a good girl in the art world is the worst decision for female artists, so be bad.”
Moving between different social and cultural realities has sharpened her perception rather than altered her ethos. “I stay the same, but I get different points of view.” Having had to understand others from an early age, she says, “now I can see through the people and never judge them but use a critical approach to communicate the ideas I have in the hope that I can deliver the right information.”
Her ambition is not to obscure but to render visible processes we use to perceive how we relate to ecology, society and technology. Through “simple performances,” she places audiences in positions where they may feel “different kinds of emotions and thoughts simultaneously.” In that simultaneity, she suggests, art becomes “a useful tool for rethinking society and its processes.”
Selman recognizes how with increased recognition have come increased expectations. “There were always expectations from artists who are part of marginalized communities to help their communities all the time,” she notes. Success intensifies this burden. “When you gain fame, visibility, and success, people somehow expect you to give what you have to those who do not have.” She adds, pointedly, “To be honest, I had been doing that even before my success.”
Her questions are direct if rhetorical. “Why are artists who are also successful, yet come from white-privileged societies, not asked the same? Why does no one ask them to help people, to give back to the world? And why are wealthy people, in general, not asked to help communities in need?”
The pressure can come from many directions: “Maybe these expectations come from my own community, who believe I can fix all their lives. Or even from my family, who expected me to buy a villa, have a husband, have children, while I had to work three times harder just to make their lives easier.”
“People forget that I am a human being, and that I am sensitive as well, regardless of how strong I appear.”
Self-preservation, then, becomes part of the equation. “In life, it is very important to believe in and love yourself first because if you don’t, who will?” she says. “You must take care of your state of mind, because art has never been perfect.” The idea that every work must be flawless, she dismisses as outdated. “If all my works were perfect, and if I had all the answers, why would I make art at all?”
Exposure is something she has learned to navigate perceptively. “Well, it took time to understand how visibility works and how you can use it for good.” Fame, she insists, was never the goal. “I was never interested in fame because of fame – I use it as a tool.” There is calculation involved. “There is a strategy in all of this because some things have to stay private, and I could never talk about them but some things which look like they are not for public I put them out there because people love to see your soul naked thinking that maybe you are vulnerable.”
The loss of her father recently altered her sense of ground. “When I lost my father in 2024, I felt like I lost part of me because he was the only person who could love me only for me and not expect much in return.” She speaks of birthdays differently now. “Only for him it was a very special day. He celebrated my birth more than me.” She shares videos of him, speaks about him often. “All my works are honest, and they come from deep down from my soul and stomach – sometimes it is painful to make art because it hurts a lot.”
When I ask where her work is heading, she answers candidly. “I am working on a few new projects – and to be honest I am ready to be done with many of them so I can move on with something that I even do not know what.” She imagines a studio devoted to experimentation. “I want to make a studio where I can just experiment and see where that is going to take me.”
The broader world also presses in when she speaks. “I have less questions now because I am in so much pain because of the war in Gaza, Ukraine, the killing, blood, hate, and death.” In such a climate, the role of art feels uncertain. “Then you ask yourself if art changes something. It cannot stop the killing but at least there is this power with art like the possibility for a change – maybe we call it hope.”
Even amid the weight of global trauma and personal pain, Selman continues to make art that directly engages with the systems around her. She transforms scrap metal, machines and performances into experiences that show how people live, work and survive, and invites others to see that reality clearly.
Team Credits:
Words by Ashik Zaman
Art Credits:
1) Selma Selman, 600 Years of Migrant Mothers, oil paint on milk tanker, Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthuis SYB (NL), Photography by Vanesa Miteva.
2) Selma Selman, Platinum, platinum axe, 2021, Courtesy of the artist and National Gallery BIH, Photography by Damir Šagolj.
3, 4 & 9) Selma Selman, Vale, 2025, oil paint on Mercedes hood, Courtesy of private collection, Photography by Marjorie Brunet Plaza.
5, 6, & 10) Selma Selman, Vale, 2025, Courtesy of the artist and acb Galéria, Budapest, and ChertLüdde, Berlin, Photography by Marjorie Brunet Plaza.
7) Selma Selman, Motherboards, performance, 2023–ongoing, Courtesy of the artist and Krass Festival, Photography by Marko Ilić.
8) Selma Selman, Painting on Metal, acrylic paint on scrap metal, 2023, Courtesy of the artist and Gropius Bau, Photography by Eike Walkenhorst.
11) Selma Selman, Motherboards (A Golden Nail), 2025, gold plated nail, Courtesy of the artist, Photography by Peter Cox.
12) Selma Selman, Courtesy of the artist, Photography by Fabian Landewee.
13) Selma Selman, Ophelia’s Awakening, oil paint on Lotus Esprit ‘78, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and acb Gallery, Photography by Dávid Tóth.