Selma Selman’s work is on view at Kunsthuis SYB, Hoofdstraat 70 in Beetsterzwaag. Opening hours: Thursday to Saturday, 13:00 – 17:00.
At Kunsthuis SYB in Beetsterzwaag, Selma Selman presents her new exhibition 600 Years of Migrant Mothers, a collaboration between Kunsthuis SYB and Arcadia. The exhibition features a series of monumental new paintings alongside a selection of films, drawings, and sound works. The project is part of a larger artistic research into the women who shaped Selman’s life – yet who often remain invisible in history. By tracing generations of both real and imagined mothers, she explores the link between knowledge and power. Who gets to know their foremothers? And how does that knowledge translate into political agency?
Selma Selman (1991), born in Bosnia and Herzegovina and of Roma descent, uses this work to reclaim the overlooked stories shared around kitchen tables – stories that are often lost to time, especially within marginalized communities. Genealogy, the practice of gathering and passing on family histories, becomes a way to explore the feminist idea that “the personal is political.” For Selman, uncovering her female lineage means telling the story of generations of Roma women who have faced centuries of displacement across Southeast Europe – in cities like Prishtina, Sarajevo, and Bihać, where history often celebrates only the male line.
In her new series of paintings, Selman honours women from various generations on large metal diptychs, watched over by a self-portrait of the artist without eyes – allowing their gaze to come through. For some of the works, she collected materials from Roma cemeteries and merged them with imagery from a wedding. Where records are missing or erased, Selman turns to imagination to fill the blind spots, offering new visions of what the future could hold.