Legality – Berlin Art Link

Dreaming Outside the Law: ‘Magical Realism’ at WIELS

Alison Hugill — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 09:12:42 +0000

This article is part of our feature topic Legality. On a small, princess-pink television on the fifth floor of the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, an animated bear smokes a blunt as a spectral voice recounts a run-in with the police that nearly devolved into violence. The film is Nigerian-American poet Precious Okoyomon’s ‘It’s dissociating season’ (2019), and the narrator is her…

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Material Witnessing: An Interview with Susan Schuppli

Alison Hugill — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 08:54:35 +0000

This article is part of our feature topic Legality. The judicial system is both intimidating and beguiling—a complex web of ritualized procedures enacted in hallowed, semi-public chambers, administered by (mostly) men dressed in long black or red robes. In our video call, artist and academic Susan Schuppli likens it to a “dramaturgy,” a “choreopolitics” whose workings are highly coded and whose…

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Conditions for Living: Gala Porras-Kim’s Exhibition-in-Print

Alison Hugill — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 11:59:45 +0000

This article is part of our feature topic Legality. In 2017, the government of New Zealand Aotearoa granted personhood to the Whanganui River, legislation that “combined Western legal precedent with Māori understanding of the river as an indivisible and living whole, and as the spiritual ancestor of the Whanganui Iwi (a Māori tribe).” This definition is not only a protective measure but marks a…

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Restorative Laughter: An Interview with Zasha Colah

Alison Hugill — Fri, 23 May 2025 07:07:10 +0000

This article is part of our feature topic Legality. The 13th Berlin Biennale, which brings together over 60 artists and presents more than 170 works, will open on June 13th at four venues across the city—KW, Hamburger Bahnhof, Sophiensaele and a former courthouse in Moabit. Biennale curator, Zasha Colah—assisted by Valentina Viviani—has just announced the title of this year’s show: ‘passing the…

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The Carceral Sublime: An Interview with Sable Elyse Smith

Alison Hugill — Fri, 16 May 2025 09:55:35 +0000

This article is part of our feature topic Legality. Sable Elyse Smith’s works explore the strange dimensionalities created by the American legal system. The nature of contemporary carceral culture is totalizing, from a media sphere dominated by everything from sensationalized manhunts to prison furniture designed to enforce and reify a vulgar order of violence. Smith’s works explore the uneven…

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Letter from the Editor: Legality

Alison Hugill — Fri, 09 May 2025 08:12:53 +0000

This article is part of our feature topic Legality. The term “extralegality” gets at something beyond the legal-illegal binary: it suggests a work-around that questions the sharply, yet arbitrarily, delineated moral boundaries of the law. In the US right now, the topic of “undocumented immigrants” (or “illegal aliens” as the Trump administration has labelled them) has taken a central position in…

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