Selma Selman: Scrap Metal, Labour and Transformation

00:00:04: Welcome to Art Unquoted.

00:00:05: I'm Charlotte Desaga

00:00:07: and I am Esenija Bannan, where two billion-based art professionals who think that in a world of noise revealing things can sometimes be found in few words.

00:00:19: In each episode we take single quote and see what it leads us.

00:00:23: This is Spark & Friction.

00:00:33: Scrap metal into gold Stigmatized labor Into prestigious labour Incapacity into invention.

00:00:42: The artist was born in Bihaj, Bosnia and Herzegovina in one year.

00:00:47: And Semen trained as a painter.

00:00:51: family collected recycled metal to make living work that is often socially devalued.

00:00:57: Metal was part of her everyday environment.

00:01:00: A father gave her sheets from the scrapyard and she began to paint her to them.

00:01:05: That practical beginning became fundamental to her visual language, I recently saw one of Sermon's painted engine hoods in Vienna.

00:01:13: what struck me was how present the metal remained.

00:01:16: it did not disappear behind a painted face.

00:01:20: What i find so striking about her portraits is that they can feel intimate often even tender but then surface itself never becomes soft And the face painted on a car hood carries the roughness of the material with it.

00:01:37: Yeah, and despite this slight awkwardness off the figures they feel very alive.

00:01:43: Sermon describes this aspect of her practice in a very particular way.

00:01:47: transformation is at the core my practice.

00:01:50: scrap metal into gold.

00:01:52: stigmatized labor into prestigious labour incapacity into invention.

00:01:58: Yes rather strong statement but I ask myself, does it not promise an easy transformation?

00:02:04: The metal doesn't turn into gold.

00:02:07: In any literal or symbolical sense.

00:02:10: its past remains present

00:02:12: And the phrase has something of alchemy about it, but Salman does not offer a fantasy or purification.

00:02:18: A car panel enters the gallery with its own history intact.

00:02:23: art changes their conditions under which we see it.

00:02:26: It doesn't erase the works stigma and poverty that made available.

00:02:32: That's why I find authentic is way too easy for work can sound as an artist You know, merely brings a background into the room but someone's directness is made.

00:02:43: It comes through painting performance and a sharp awareness of how institutions look at those materials... ...and their bodies and stories.

00:02:54: And Walter Benjamin once wrote that The tiniest authentic fragment of daily life says more than painting.

00:03:02: I mean, I do not think Salman illustrates that sentence but it helps name the charge of her material.

00:03:08: This metal is NOT an industrial trophy brought into a wide cube from a safe distance!

00:03:14: It's a fragment every day life carrying labor use and social relations INTO THE PICTURE.

00:03:21: Absolutely A Fragment That Is Often Overlooked And Rarely Placed In Relation To Art.

00:03:27: Then She Paints The Face On It The Metal Becomes A Surface.

00:03:31: It doesn't really become mutual.

00:03:33: In the portrait, in the panel they look back at us together.

00:03:37: Yeah and her works return to growing up in the Romar community in Bihach And To The Recurring Work of Collecting & Recycling Scrap Metal.

00:03:47: it raises questions of value makes them impossible to keep abstract.

00:03:51: How do we value a material?

00:03:53: Whose work Do We See?

00:03:55: whose work do we only notice once its reframed as art?

00:04:00: I find the last question slightly irritating because, you know, to me a car panel from a scrapyard can gain price visibility and status once it enters in museum.

00:04:11: But someone does not pretend that this move settles anything!

00:04:15: Yeah there is related questions in her newer work.

00:04:19: When Céline traces her maternal line The problem isn't simply that records are missing.

00:04:25: Roma history Is often held at margins of official archives And what remains can be personal, partial and interfered.

00:04:34: A fragment can carry life without becoming proof of the

00:04:38: whole.".

00:04:40: Do you remember her performance in Mercedes-Benz?

00:04:42: That makes that tension truly physical!

00:04:45: I mean... You know.. The artists are members for family dismantle and Mercedes-benz.

00:04:51: It's loud exhausting almost theatrical But it is also worker.

00:04:56: family knows firsthand.

00:04:58: Yeah, I mean i love that performance and the work does not stand in for labor.

00:05:03: Labor happens then front of an art audience.

00:05:06: um The car's taking a part its parts are sorted material Is recovered?

00:05:11: The performance makes its own conditions visible but It cannot turn them into A clean story Of rescue.

00:05:18: Yeah, in that performance you can feel the metal dust and smell the rust.

00:05:23: And there are sharp edges on machines... The work does not make any of it presentable for white walls at an institution.

00:05:31: True!

00:05:32: There's another work Dirt Zero which shifts to question again.

00:05:36: Zamen placed canvases into her father's transport van while metal waste was being moved.

00:05:43: dust, liquids and residue settled on the fabric.

00:05:46: The canvas becomes a record of exactly that journey.

00:05:51: Yeah I find it's subtle but very strong gesture.

00:05:54: And the van becomes an accidental studio... ...and the journey becomes the image.

00:06:00: Exactly!

00:06:01: Also they look really interesting.

00:06:03: The canvas does not illustrate labour.

00:06:05: It carries its traces.

00:06:08: Its surface become records movement, transport & contact.

00:06:13: And that changed how I read the portraits as well.

00:06:16: They're not only images of people, The material brings other bodies into the picture People who lift it, people who drive collect recycle and then again paint.

00:06:27: Yeah

00:06:27: right!

00:06:28: And Salman once said...

00:06:43: They ask us to follow the material and notice where it leads.

00:06:47: To a family history, to The Scrapyard, to a car, to the gallery… And again – to painted face!

00:06:53: And perhaps that is the deepest transformation in her work?

00:06:56: The material changes context but does not lose its memory... ...and the viewer's left with question rather than resolution.

00:07:05: What becomes visible when art doesn't smooth over conditions from which it emerges?

00:07:17: And that's all the time we have for today.

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00:07:27: We'll be back soon with more ideas to unpack.

00:07:30: Thank You For Listening.