Art/Law Sessions presents Adelita Husni-Bey
Thursday November 23rd, Jubilee Building G135 2-4pm. University of Sussex, Brighton
We were extremely excited to have the wonderful and influential artist and agitator Adelita Husni-Bey to come and visit us at Sussex as part of the Art/Law Sessions. Adelita’s work is provocative, inspiring and most importantly, political. She drafted a ‘Convention on the Use of Space’, along with many other presiders and stakeholders, such as lawyers, politicians, housing officials, squatters, members of the public, and academics, that sought to protect squatters using vacant property in the Netherlands, promoting use-value property over ownership, homelessness and exclusion. The convention was drafted over a series of months, the workings and annotations of which were shown in an exhibition at CASCO entitled ‘White Paper: The Law’ (2015), the work itself coming full circle as both a piece of art and ultimately a piece of legislation. Her work questions the divisions between art and law, combining political and aesthetic processes. Adelita has written about her art/law work in ‘White Paper: On Land, Law and the Imaginary’ (Valiz, 2017).
Adelita joined us in person to present her work, talk about the convention, amongst other projects, and join in conversation with participants to discuss the role of art, politics and law.