Selma Selman: Mercedes Matrix

Selma Selman: Mercedes Matrix

2019, video documentation of a performance 

The video Mercedes Matrix documents a collective performance, originally performed at the 2019 edition of Krass Kampnagel festival in Hamburg, in which the artist and her family re-enacted their usual daily labour practice: the dismantling of a Mercedes-Benz car to be recycled as spare parts. The integration of the family’s economic activity to the art sector highlights the value-making processes within the arts. 

According to art historian Jasmina Tumbaš, a distinctive relation between the body and identity is central to Selma Selman’s artistic practice. And similarly to feminist practices from the 1970s onward (e.g. also found in the works of Hanna Wilke or Sanja Iveković), Selma Selman questions the violence, inherent to identity politics: the processes of objectification, othering and exoticisation of the so-called “others”.

Performed by Selma Selman, Hari Selman, Muhamed Selman, Mirsad Pučić; edited by Peter Chong-ha Lee; video documentation by Mario Ilić; music by Philip Glass.