Gorgons (Do Not Look Into Our Eyes), 2026

Selma Selman

Selma Selman: My name is Selma Selman. I’m an artist and activist born and raised in Bosnia. I live between Amsterdam and New York.

In Gorgons (Do Not Look Into Our Eyes), I’m not just referring to the myth of Medusa, I’m thinking about a body that’s never fully stable. One that’s always on alert. It is a body that feels bold, exposed to attack and also constantly having to defend itself. 

The gaze for me isn’t symbolic. It is something active and risky. It can actually do something. So, when the work says, “don’t look into our eyes”, I mean it as a real warning not a metaphor.

The encounter feels unstable. You can’t fully predict what happens when eyes meet. Looking becomes a kind of entry into a space where nothing is completely safe or settled.

I’m really interested in that moment when a body gets perceived as dangerous, not as something fixed. That is something that happens in response to being seen. Like danger isn’t inherent. It emerges through that exchange. It is a way of dealing with exposure or surviving it. 

The materials are also doing something similar. I’m using things like satellite antennas and wheel rims, objects that come from systems of movement, circulation and transmission. They’re not passive, they carry traces of use, of orientation, of signals moving through them. They don’t just sit in space, they register it, and in some way, they return it. They almost feel like they’re looking back.

So, the work stays in this kind of tension. It does not try to resolve anything. It holds that continued state where exposure and protection can’t really be separated, and where every encounter has the potential to shift, or react, or resist.