On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, ChertLüdde is pleased to present Selma Selman’s (1991, Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina) first exhibition at the gallery, titled Ophelia’s Awakening.
As you step into the exhibition space, a sharp, pungent blend of gasoline and metal immediately fills the air. The smell is part of the artwork The Most Dangerous Woman (2024), created with the Perfumery School of Symrise AG in Holzminden for the artist’s recent exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. The abrasive smell wafts around the gallery, which has been transformed into a scrapyard of discarded cars and appliances. Mercedes-Benz car parts – remnants like doors and hoods, together with various metal objects – have been used as canvases. Oscillating between paintings and sculptures, these metal artworks contain portraits and auto-fictional texts from Selman’s series Letters to Omer (2021 – ongoing).
One of the car hoods reads, “DEAR OMER / WOMEN LIKE ME CRY A RIVER / DRINK IT, AND THEN BUILD A BOAT / IN WHICH THEY MAKE PLANS / TO BE BORN AGAIN”. And on a white metal sheet, Selman has painted, “DEAR OMER, / THEY TOLD ME THERE IS / NO SPACE FOR GIRLS LIKE ME.” Addressing Omer – a fictional character – Selman confronts issues of discrimination, sexuality and femininity. Through these intimate declarations, she positions herself within these contexts, challenging and transcending their boundaries. Selman’s artistic activism thus permeates the space, as fluid and pervasive as the scent perfuming the exhibition.
These scrap metal paintings, part of the series Ophelia’s Awakening (2024), feature Selman as both subject and storyteller. In them, she reimagines Hamlet’s Ophelia as a figure of empowerment, overturning the traditional associations of femininity and fragility. Unlike the passive portrayals by Shakespeare or John Everett Millais, Selman’s Ophelia emerges as a defiant, self-determined woman who reclaims her agency and rewrites her own narrative. Placing herself within a wider art historical context, some of these self-portraits mimic famous paintings – like the nude image on a small metal disk resembling Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde from 1866.
Other portraits draw inspiration from Selman’s 2023 drawings Superpositional Intersectionalism – Sleeping Guards, also exhibited at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. In these drawings, Selman expands on her portraiture with abstract forms and natural elements that converge simultaneously. These elements visualize the artist’s research into the theories of quantum physics and the principles of intersectionality; the first states that particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously, while the other deals with the overlapping and interconnected nature of social identities and discrimination. What emerges is a rich multiplicity coursing within each painting that deals with complexities head-on.
Central to these artworks is always the artist, with self-portraiture becoming a tool for Selman to make visible her relationships with her surroundings, her family, her Roma background, art and the present moment. This also impacts her choice in materials, as the scrap metal resonates with the financial resources of her Roma family in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the ongoing economic difficulties disproportionately impact Roma and other minority communities. As her family’s income primarily comes from reselling scrap metal, this adds another layer of depth to each painting by elevating her family’s profession.
In another reference to her family, Selman’s haunting autobiographical film Crossing the Blue Bridge (2024) builds on her mother’s memories of the Bosnian War (1992-95). A fragment of this film is presented in the gallery, becoming another echo in the artist’s explorations of her own resistance to social classifications while also commending her mother’s strength.
The film recounts a day in 1994 during a ceasefire when Selman’s mother, Naza Abdulahi, accompanied by one of her daughters, went into town to sell their belongings and use the proceeds to buy food for their family. As they crossed the Blue Bridge on their way home, they encountered a horrible scene of corpses and animal carcasses. Carrying groceries in one hand and shielding her daughter’s eyes with the other, Naza Abdulahi crossed the bridge.
This same bridge is the setting of her video work, where Selman reenacts her mother and sister’s journey – running over the bridge, but never reaching its end. In this act of recasting herself as Naza Abdulahi, Selman shows how her mother gave the artist the ability to assert herself in the face of intense adversity.
Throughout the exhibition, Selma Selman transforms pain and trauma into powerful symbols of resilience. By reawakening the figure of Ophelia through self-portraiture and superimposing Selman’s own biographical elements, the artist creates a narrative that distances Ophelia from her traditionally Eurocentric origins, offering a new, empowered vision of femininity.
Selma Selman: Ophelia’s Awakening
Sep 7 – Nov 9, 2024
ChertLudde
Berlin, Germany
