Selma Selman - Don't look into my eyes


Selma Selman
DON’T LOOK INTO MY EYES
02.09. – 24.10.2021


Opening: 01.09., 6 pm
Performance Selma Selman: 01. and 02.09., 7 pm

The Kasseler Kunstverein is pleased to present DON`T LOOK INTO MY EYES, the first comprehensive solo exhibition by Selma Selman in Germany curated by Boshko Boskovic and Olga Holzschuh. The Bosnian and Herzegovinian artist and activist Selma Selman (*1991) integrates narratives of the Roma community, including her own family in her artistic practice. Her works alternate between sensitive, harsh and ironic gestures revealing discriminatory identity attributions, role expectations and stereotypes. Thereby Selman's body and identity becomes a medium for capturing universal and personal themes that articulate political resistance and feminist empowerment. Her work is socially engaged bringing to the forefront the value of the labor that is traditionally performed by Roma people, making these stories visible thus reorienting the usual narratives and making them more socially acceptable.

This exhibition explores multiple concepts that coexist in the opus through the media of performance, drawing, painting, video and photography of Selma Selman including alchemy, reimagining identities, oppression, intimacy and desire. In her oeuvre, Selman transforms some of the negative experiences of her life into positive ones: family dynamics of survival become channeled into art, unwanted metal gets dissolved into paintings and sculptures; dreams, visions and strange feelings get sublimated into performances. The exhibition DON`T LOOK INTO MY EYES invites visitors to see, hear and feel what Selma Selman has to say to us. It is upon the public to dare look into the topics that Selman addresses through their own eyes or to decide to turn a blind eye and look the other way.

Boshko Boskovic

This exhibition was made possible with support from

Kulturamt der Stadt Kassel
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
ERIAC - European Roma Institut for Arts and Culture
Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst    
ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Kasseler Sparkasse