Selma Selman's First Italian Solo Show at GAMeC Bergamo Explores Roma Memory and Trauma

Selma Selman's first solo exhibition in an Italian institution, "1000 Tears," occupies GAMeC Bergamo's Spazio Zero until 24 January 2027. The Bosnian artist, born in Bihać in 1991 to a Roma family, centers the show on "Crossing the Blue Bridge" (2024), a video projected on a large totem. The work revisits a 1994 childhood memory: her mother crossing Bihać's Gradski most, known as the "Blue Bridge" over the Una river, during a ceasefire, holding groceries in one hand while shielding a daughter's face from war dead. The exhibition falls within GAMeC's Pedagogia della Speranza program, directed by Lorenzo Giusti with the museum's Education Department and inspired by Paulo Freire (Recife, 1921–1997). A faded photograph of Selman at age two with the women of her family anchors new graphic works: long-haired, depersonalized female figures whose hands intertwine, evoke gestures including armed violence, and cover painted eyes on metal tubes mounted above the windows. Scrap materials, recalling her father's trade in scrap collection, become "living" sculptures—luxury car hoods and doors among them—that return the viewer's gaze. Selman also dismantles Mercedes-Benz cars, often with relatives. "Letter to Omer" (published by CURA) gathers 140 letters to an imaginary figure written since 2021, with a postface by writer Aleksandar Hemon recalling their first meeting at a Hamburg performance. In 2017 she founded "Get The Heck To School" to support Roma girls' and boys' education in Bosnia.