Until We Are Worth More Than Gold

#8 2025 Transforming the Anthropo(s)cene INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 1 SELMA SELMAN Until We Are Worth More Than Gold Selma Selman, an artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina of Romani origin, works with technological residues. On stage and in her installations, she welds and saws car scrap and mechanical waste, poetically entangling them with memories of war and displacement during the Bosnian War, while exploring the dimensions of racism and statelessness of the Roma community. Flowers of Life (2024), an installation composed of giant industrial grabs used in scrapyards. This hybrid, animated yet inanimate mechanical sculpture questions what actually constitutes ‘life’ and ‘value’ in the global ‘Wasteocene’ with its dialectics of extracting, discarding, and the othering of people, matter and places. The following excerpts are drawn from her recent works. Performative Arts Extraction Sculpture Transmutation Anthropo(s)cene Waste Reassembling Selma Selman Until We Are Worth More Than Gold INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 2 FIG. 1 Selma Selman, Platinum , 2021, National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina My artistic approach is deeply informed by two key experiences: my coming of age during the Bosnian War (1992–95) and my Roma identity. Through various media, I explore the dimensions of the stateless, discriminated Roma within the ongoing economic crises of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the socio-political possibilities of the 600 yearlong Roma culture founded in continuous material invention and transcultural politics. A suite of my works articulates the transmutation of value between my family’s labour recycling metal waste for survival as Roma and my conceptual labour as an artist re-assembling processes and symbols. In my social practice, I investigate notions of oppression, eroticism, patriarchy, femininity, women’s rights, desires and intimacy and frictions which exist between collective and personal action. I use media to dissect borders of identity, currency, law and representation placed upon me, my family and my community. In my long-term project “Get the Heck to School” I distribute scholarship funds to at-risk Roma children facing the problems of poverty and child marriage, increasing due to the vulnerabilities stemming from our displacement and the trauma of recent warfare. So far, the project has provided 12 Roma girls with scholarships, successfully shielding them from Selma Selman Until We Are Worth More Than Gold INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 3 child marriage. In conjunction, we have provided more than 50 children with daily lunch in school. My theoretical research centres around both traditional and new media experiments exploring the possibilities of the concept of ‘superpositional intersectionalism’. ‘Superposition’ is a concept borrowed from quantum physics describing the ability to be in multiple states at the same time. Coupled with the transformation of intersectionality into an ‘ism’, I aim to enable a grand narrative of the interconnectedness of social categorizations such as race, class and gender, anchored to an empirical physical phenomenon. Using this concept of the mutability of matter and context, I work towards repositioning the Roma as the planet’s leading social, ecological and technological futurists. For roughly 100 years, we have been recycling waste to self-sustain as an oppressed minority within Western modernity. I am currently working with the Roma community, theorists, technicians, chemists, scientists and organizers – to introduce a sustainable process for extracting gold from industrial and consumer electronics. The extracted gold is being sculpted into one-inch axes – representing the tool which has enabled our survival. This work is accompanied by ongoing reflections regarding Deleuze’s writings on the ubiquity of metals within our waters, grasses, varieties of wood, and animal organs. FIG. 2 Selma Selman, Platinum , 2021, National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina FIG. 3 Selma Selman, Platinum , 2021, National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina In a related ongoing work, Dirt 0, I am recontextualizing an old van that my family uses for recycling. Inside the van, I am spreading a white canvas to absorb dirt from metals over a period of several months. For the long-term, I am leading a research effort constructing a contemporary Selma Selman Until We Are Worth More Than Gold INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 4 cultural framework of a 100-year plan centered around possibly solving the systemic problems affecting the Roma people. This conceptual framework is rooted in poetic experiments mapping the 600-year-long history of transcultural inventions through the lens of my mother and her ancestors’ migrations. The Beginning of the World I am here. Again. It feels like the beginning of the world, when people had so much free time. I’m not even sure how to explain life anymore, and I’m tired of being negative about it – because it seems we’ve all become individuals, each one of us hoping that we, or rather just I, am okay. Is that wrong? Why would it be? This is what we wanted. So now, when we don’t get support from others, we’re surprised – but we do nothing, not even try to imagine what we could do for a better tomorrow. I used to wonder: if I had 100,000 euros, how would I feel? And now, even with more, I’m still the same. But I still wonder – how can people save so much money knowing they will die, and their children will die too? Maybe not by violence, but by time. They’ll grow old and fade like everyone else. So what’s next? What comes next is capital, again and again. Learning how to turn your trauma into business is the greatest lesson you learn in America. A place where the past becomes the present. A place to hide if you don’t have money. Where should we go? I had a friend who, when she found out my father was in the hospital and I had so many obligations and personal struggles, stopped talking to me. It took me a while to understand that some people cannot handle the fact that humans can exist in both good and bad situations – and that if you love someone, you stay, regardless. Another friend was the opposite. She loved me the most when I had problems, but couldn’t fully love me when I was successful. And I understood that. Maybe I will do something similar. Maybe we all ignore certain things because we’re told we must be mentally stable – and God forbid we are sensitive people. And then there is love. But what kind of love? Feminism exists for white, rich women, but not for my sisters. In the 21st century, you’re still expected to obey a man, to be cheated on, to be blamed for everything – and to not even know why. And the men? They believe in Allah. They pray to Him for strength. They hope they will go to heaven. And one day, all the men who did wrong to women will experience terrible harm. As my mother says: “May my tears have mercy in Allah’s name, and may those who hurt my children experience a thousand deaths while still alive.” Selma Selman Until We Are Worth More Than Gold INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 5 FIG. 4 Selma Selman, Flowers of Life , 2024, installation, variable sizes, solo exhibition Flowers of Life at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt FIG. 5 Selma Selman, Flowers of Life , 2024, installation, variable sizes, solo exhibition Flowers of Life at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt FIG. 6 Selma Selman, Flowers of Life , 2024, installation, variable sizes, solo exhibition Flowers of Life at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt Selma Selman Until We Are Worth More Than Gold INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 6 Speaking like a President The following is an edited and rewritten version of my performance Presidential Speech Until We Are Worth More Than Gold (2022), which was invited by lumbung member OFF-Biennale Budapest and presented on the steps of the Fridericianum during documenta fifteen in 2022. In a humorous mixture of self-promotion pitch, critique of the present, and speculative vision of the future beyond capital accumulation, I call on the art world. Ladies and gentlemen, Dear collectors, curators, gallerists, producers, art critics, and aficionados, I started my first business when I was a 17-year-old high school student. I was selling paintings commissioned by my fellow citizens of Bihać. I would produce five paintings a day, paintings of the Bihać landscape, Mostar bridge, Sarajevo tulip fields, Una River, family portraits, portraits and animals. At that period, I also had my first solo exhibition in Bihać, where all my artworks were sold. One of the customers, an older male who commissioned a Bihać nightscape, while handing me the 50 euros for the painting, fondled my hand inappropriately. 14 years after that incident, he went bankrupt and had to sell his new Mercedes. I was the customer. Today, as I stand in the homeland of Mercedes, I invite you to the tower of this museum to see the parts of a Mercedes hoods that I transformed into art. We are at a crossroads in history in which all of us, on Earth, are poised between crisis and possibility. We have all seen glimpses of how dystopian, soulless, petty and cruel our world can be if we allow the technology to be used for conservative aims. What if instead, we used our technologies to reduce the danger and burden of labor for our human workers? To then make available more time, resources and energy to increase our positive capacities. We can intentionally design our technologies, so they accurately balance our humanity and others – not diminish it. My father was a king! But not by birth. He was an elected king. Elected by the elders of the Bihać Roma community. He ruled fairly, he invented electricity for the community, he gave advice and money to those in need. Therefore, I was a princess. They called me Tito, Christiano Ronaldo, and Picasso. We are always many creations simultaneously – and there is a hope in that, a hope that is simply more. More, as in Mr. More, Mr. Thomas More, who wrote a book titled “Utopia” 500 years ago. He wrote that the equality of a society can be measured by how it values its Selma Selman Until We Are Worth More Than Gold INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 7 parts in relation to gold. To rephrase it more poetically – we will not be truly free – until we are worth more than gold. My mother is a hero. Once upon a time, she told me that having your wallet is your power. She had two roles in her life – wife from the age of 12 and mother from the age of 13. Until the age of 47, she was invisible. She had no documents, and her only wish was to travel to Croatia and taste the sea. I captured the moment when she realised that the sea is salty in a video which was presented in the exhibition Hero Mother , curated by Bojana Pejic and Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch in Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin. My mother never had a wallet of her own. She taught me that having my own money will make me an independent woman. We are all relentlessly working towards a better world. My brothers and sisters, collectors, curators, gallerists, producers, art critics, and aficionados, I have had many dreams which I made true – but I also have a dream that one day, soon, we will not live in capitalism and the value of human beings will be measured by their skills, capacity and thoughts – not by money. I am neither Black or white . I was born with skin too pale to be considered common in my Roma community. So they called me Snow White. Outside of my community, they considered me Black. In the global art society, I was neither black enough, nor white enough to be considered. But I succeeded. How did the errors of racism, war and inequity come to exist? These mistakes stem from colonialist crimes in the 15th Century which illegally extracted wealth, lands, tools, culture and lives from the Amerindians and deposited it in Europe. There is a growing number of legal precedents articulating and resisting the lack of legal legitimacy. I am not stopping until I get what I want. But now, armed with accurate knowledge, we can confidently walk forward, with less unnecessary trials, less avoidable hardships, less ignorance. Let us then transform our plight into a battle cry – UNTIL WE ARE WORTH MORE THAN GOLD! My life was not easy, but look – here I am. You are applauding my name for the sake of my revolution, and I know I am not alone. My success wouldn’t be possible without my family and friends. Dear collectors, curators, gallerists, producers, art critics, and aficionados, thank you and please, feel free to appreciate, respect, honor, and buy my art. Selma Selman Until We Are Worth More Than Gold INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 8 Please cite as follows: Selma Selman: “Until We Are Worth More Than Gold.” In: INSERT. Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries, no. 8, Transforming the Anthropo(s)cene, 2025, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17771663. This contribution is licensed under the CC-BY-NC-ND License 4.0 International (Creative Commons, Attribution, Non Commercial, No Derivatives). The reuse of material from other sources may require further authorizations for use by the respective copyright holders. CREDITS Fig. 1–3: Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Damir Šagolj. Fig. 4–6: Courtesy of the artist and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Photo: Norbert Miguletz. AUTHOR Selma Selman is an artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina, living and working in New York, Amsterdam, and Bihać. She earned her BFA in Painting from the University of Banja Luka in 2014 and completed her MFA in Transmedia, Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University in 2018. From 2021 to 2023, she was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Her work has been shown internationally, including at Gropius Bau, Hamburger Bahnhof, documenta fifteen, Manifesta 14, Kunstraum Innsbruck, MO Museum Vilnius, National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, acb Gallery Budapest, the FutuRoma Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, and recently at MOMA PS1 in 2025. Her initiative “Get the Heck to School” supports education for young Romnja girls.