Selma Selman: Virtual Materialism

Selma Selman: Virtual Materialism

2020, paintings on metal, various dimensions

Selma Selman is presenting her artistic opus in Ljubljana for the first time with Virtual Materialism, a series of newly commissioned paintings on metal, and Mercedes Matrix, the video documentation of her performance. With both works, Selman turns to labour and value production in the economics of car industry and art (and indirectly, through beauty, of cosmetics)* and to the various levels of their “economization”: from the material and financial to the branded and habitual. 

 “I have always had a very personal relationship with metal, as my family and I have been collecting and recycling it to sustain ourselves since my childhood. My latest paintings on scrap metal depict impressions of everyday life, references to art history, and text collages. Humour, wordplay and my incessant probing of the boundaries of art fuse painting and sculpture into small intimate objects.” – Selma Selman

*Cosmetics and car mobility are historically connected by the chemical industry (the first industrial nail polish was a by-product of nitrocellulose car paint), as well as the medium through which they have been promoted: the coloured moving image of the celluloid film. Both cosmetics and car mobility are also to be considered as important modern cultural practices of women’s emancipation despite their connection to governance and the ongoing environmental crisis.

Co-produced by the City of Women, Goethe-Institut Ljubljana, District Berlin.

In addition, Selma Selman will perform at the Corneous Stories exhibition opening.