ABSTRACT
Since 2002, London-based visual artist Carey Young has developed a number of innovative, research-based bodies of artistic work which address law as subject and as artistic medium, and which have been exhibited in and collected by galleries and museums internationally. Joan Kee is a Detroit-based art historian and lawyer keenly interested in the insights artists bring to the theory, practice and envisioning of law through their works. For almost a decade, Young and Kee have been in regular dialogue, most recently concerning Young's 2017 work Palais de Justice for the journal Law and Humanities. On the occasion of the invitation to contribute to this publication, they conducted the interview via email. Joan
Why law? Despite the extent to which contemporary art internalises some kind of law at almost every stage of creation, reception and circulation, artistic engagement with legal doctrines or approaches is not at all common. What keeps you interested in law as a subject?
CareyIn a broad sense, law intrigues me as a form of choreography relating to power. Law controls our movement, rights, autonomy and agency in the world, whilst also, in certain circumstances, preventing and removing those things. I imagine law in terms of lines, and that is a very visual thing, although law's linearity can be largely invisible, especially to those with privilege who are less constrained by these limits. As Catherine MacKinnon (2007, 39) said, ‘The same people who have power in life have power in law'. So therefore, my interest is also to critique law as a form of power and violence, to try to work with our general desire for its protections even though it may oppress us, and to try and broaden the public understanding of law so that people may feel more able to critique it and engage with it themselves.
