Young and Diverse

For marking 8-th of April, International Roma Day, Reporting Diversity Network 2.0 and our podcast “Young and Diverse“ hosted international artist Selma Selman as our guest. Selma is a Roma woman coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina. She installs creativity, but also identity aspects into her artwork. As a daughter coming from a family that earns their living from collecting and selling iron, Selma uses iron and reusable materials to draw on. In her art show Mercedes Matrix she takes her family with her and they break a Mercedes in front of an audience in order to question the labor and capitalism in Roma settings and beyond. Selman family wrote on their family van “Selma Selman is Tito“ to let her know on the solidarity spirit and power she brings to their village. Selma owns her Selma Selman studio in Bosnia and helps young Roma girls to obtain their necessary education through her foundation.

She is an active player in the media scene. From being popular in media interviews to promoting her work online, she says that as a Roma woman has been targeted by a lot of hate speech from white people. Selma’s mechanism to fight hate is actually to ignore to the point where haters become conscious of their own unhappiness.

This episode of the podcast “Young and Diverse“ is created in cooperation with the podcast Celebrate Life and local artist from North Macedonia, Goran Kostovski- Indog.

In the first “Young & Diverse“ podcast produced as part of Reporting Diversity Network 2.0 you can hear Hana Curak talking about patriarchy, sexism, media as well as her activism. Hana Curak is a feminist meme blogger, creator of the meme page “Sve su to vjestice“/ “It’s all witches“, that uses memes in her struggles for gender equality. She is currently based in Berlin, Germany, as a sociology researcher, but originally comes from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Photo credit: CROPIX