Grey Areas: Between Art and the Law

Bringing together legal scholarship and fine art expertise, the project created a number of significant outputs and impacts.

Young’s installation ‘Declared Void II’ (2013) was exhibited in the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota) as part of the exhibition ‘I Am You, You Are Too’, from 7 September 2017-1 March 2020, seen by 309,965 people. It inspired, and was the location of an innovative public events programme at the Walker, ‘Citizenship Series: Filling the Void’, which aimed to engage artists and audiences on the topic of immigration.  

Following the formal end of the project, the collaboration contuned and has yielded significant outcomes. Carey Young’s works Declared Void II (2013) and Palais de Justice (2017) give fresh insights into the workings of legal contracts, immigration and citizenship law, law’s patriarchal structures, jurisprudence, the aesthetics of law and related discourses. Informed by collaboration with judges, lawyers, and academics, these artworks enabled critique and understanding of law, jurisprudence and legal methods for gallery visitors, art world professionals, e.g. curators, and museum staff. Declared Void II stimulated and shaped conversations about citizenship and immigration through an events programme at Walker Art Center (Minneapolis). Screening Palais de Justice to legal professionals in Belgium and Holland (2019-20) informed and changed the ways that judges and lawyers thought about their practice and the systems within which they work.