Exhibition ‘Law unchained’ from the course ‘Law & Art’: As it happened
Course Description
The Law & Art course offers an exploratory approach to legal education. Open to all students looking for a challenge, it requires no previous artistic experience, focusing instead on fostering an embodied knowledge-making process that builds upon legal thinking and artistic techniques. Each class introduces a new legal topic alongside critical theorization and artistic practices taught by experts in their respective fields, encouraging students to think beyond academic limits.
Course Assessment
The Fall 2024 iteration of the course culminated in a thought-provoking exhibition titled Law Unchained on 21st November, where students from diverse backgrounds presented their creative interpretations of contemporary issues with law beyond traditional boundaries. Through reading materials, interactive discussions, and practical exercises, students were encouraged to perceive law not as a purely abstract or linguistic concept, but as something tangible and embedded in everyday life. For the final project, an artwork in a chosen medium was assigned, accompanied by a reflective essay.
The Vernissage: A Retrospective
The exhibition commenced with a speech given by the course coordinators and a panel discussion with student representatives.
The centerpiece artworks featured paintings in various mediums, including acrylics, watercolours, oil paints and charcoal, exploring themes such as human rights violations, freedom of religious expression, the consequences of fast fashion and anti-animal testing.
To give one example, a small-scale painting depicted laboratory testing in reverse with a monkey scientist and a human testing object.
Besides paintings, the exhibition also contained artworks that incorporated collage, photography, mixed-media and performances.
In one instance, participants symbolically gave personal secrets in exchange for cookies, critiquing the idea of ‘pay-for-privacy’ and the use of ‘cookie-walls’ on websites. This act presented the hidden costs of trading personal information for seemingly trivial incentives, drawing attention to excessive data collection in the digital age. Another performance addressed the housing crisis by placing a drawing of a flat in one of the European capitals at the value of its rapidly rising cost, challenging the financial strain imposed on individuals and unaffordability of the real estate market. A similar problem can be recognised internationally, seeing how another piece addressed housing scams as increasingly common in Eastern-Asian countries.
Lastly, inspiration was drawn not only from legal scholarship but also from literature and theatre. More abstract legal concepts, such as ‘commission by omission’ were explored through empirical acts. One social experiment presented bystanders with a moral dilemma: to intervene or not when witnessing someone in danger, with differing legal consequences based on various jurisdictions. Narrative-driven stories, poems, dialogues, and monologues combined law with literary artistry. As such, these works ranged from spoken word poems critiquing systemic injustices to narrative storytelling that reimagined real-life cases.
Conclusion: A Transformative Experience
The blend of visual, conceptual and performative art demonstrated that law can be expressed and experienced beyond textual confines. Both the course and the culminating vernissage represented a significant milestone in the academic journey of all attendees, encouraging all to reimagine how law can be taught, understood, and ultimately experienced.
Blog post written by Maria-Teodora Gutica-Florescu and Jeronym Siroky, students of the 2024-edition of the course Law & Art. Photos are courtesy of Rosa Lampela.