Dura Lex Sed Lex
Dura lex sed lex is a Latin expression that means “the law is harsh but it is the law”. This adage was used in Roman times to allude to the boundaries of state legislation and its intrinsic inflexibility. In other words, we could say that if the law were not harsh, it would not be the law, and that its rigor is instrumental in the control of the majority of the people by a small group of leaders. Over the last time, the legitimacy of judicial and political actions has been questioned due to the arbitrariness of its procedures.
This exhibition addresses the power and the limits of art to confront either subtly or violently the fissures of these systems. The encounter between generations and locations on the basis of these works reveals the trans historical crossings within Latin America, thus stressing an ontological clandestine nature that has defined its culture in its reunion with western institutions.
The aesthetic-political experiments of the 1960s and the 1970s that blurred the boundaries between vital experience, legislation and the artistic object were followed by works reflecting the encounter of the body with a conventional punitive culture. Such works either used the public space as a field of action, or applied different technologies to alter the forms crystallized by the letter of the law. On the verge of illegality, many pieces are akin to the criminal object and use the exceptional art space to the extent of challenging its own system.
