Selma Selman’s subversive films are poetic hybrids that incorporate the stereotyping and hypersexualisation of the Roma community, and prejudice against Roma women. In the first film Do not look into Gypsy eyes, Selman — a Roma woman artist themself — provokes the audience into turning their attention against discrimination and commodification of the female body.

In the second film Mercedes Matrix, Selman depicts her family’s labour of collecting and recycling scrap metal as a means of income. With art documented by Marko Ilić, Selman performs Mercedes Matrix together with her family, using art as a tool for transforming the value of acts of labour. The ongoing economic crises in Bosnia and Herzegovina lends to great difficulty in gaining adequate income, especially for Roma people who encounter discrimination as well as a lack of education and governmental assistance. The work is both a poignant commentary on socio-economic hardships faced by Roma communities and a testament to the redemptive power of art and labour.

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www.selmanselma.com

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