An exhibition, a meeting, paintings, law…

On October 11, the Ottawa Art Gallery will be hosting an artistic journey devoted to the principles of personal and property law.

In this freely interpretable project, lawyer and artist Dilara Dadbin unveils pictorial representations of legal thought, directly inspired by a reading of the work of Alicia Mâzouz, Doctor of Private Law, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Law and Legal Culture degree programme at the Faculty of Law of the Université Catholique de Lille, and Mariève Lacroix, Doctor of Law, Full Professor in the Civil Law Section of the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa and lawyer at the Quebec Court of Appeal.

Alicia Mâzouz and Mariève Lacroix have been devoting part of their research to the protection of the individual and his or her body for several years now. The delicate subject of the missing person is at the heart of their work. They have thus co-authored several articles and co-edited a collective work entitled “Dialogue between death and law” published in 2017 by Éditions Yvon Blais.

It was their meeting with Dilara Dadbin that triggered the unusual exhibition project entitled “Des-compositions du droit”. Trained as a lawyer, the artist now devotes her time to pictorial art, and in particular to the question of how law is represented in it. By attending lectures given by Mariève Lacroix and Alicia Mâzouz, rereading their publications and works, and regularly discussing their vision of the law, Dilara has built up a real body of work that she has been able to offer to her two partners.

This project is therefore the fruit of a close collaboration, created and designed by legal experts to help them pass on their ideas more effectively, but also and above all to open up new methodological avenues by bringing law and art closer together.

Treated using the abstraction current, a different legal reality of the person emerges in each of the canvases. The combination of Dilara’s, Alicia’s and Mariève’s exchanges has enabled us to take another look at this often taboo subject of the lost being. The exhibition route, originally conceived by lawyers as a way of escaping from the law, ultimately helps us to understand it better. This exhibition of oil paintings is the first highlight of a new trend of thought that aims to make art a genuine means of research and teaching in law.

The exhibition will be premiered in Ottawa, but the Université Catholique de Lille will also be delighted to host the exhibition, which is sure to be the subject of many discussions due to its originality.

Congratulations to Alicia Mâzouz and her partners on the design and implementation of this ambitious and unusual project.