The work is made up of objects that evoke the visual and rhetorical policy of the Ordo Iuris foundation. They are a travesty of the official, representative portraits of the foundation’s members as well as of the graphic identity of the foundation, enhancing the ideological message contained in textual statements. The artist herself calls this installation a “group portrait of 25 members of the Institute for Legal Culture Ordo Iuris as tongues of a golden lion, with special emphasis on the President of the Board and Director of the Centre for Religious Freedom”. The work examines the ways of generating the law and the entities which are in charge of this activity. Proposing and promoting specific legal solutions, they define what is socially allowed and what is no longer within the limits acceptable to the “common-sense” majority or another group, which they regard as important for one reason or another. The artist asks the question: “Who makes and upholds the law today? Who is this law supposed to serve?” By simulating judicial space and creating entities managing it, Liliana Piskorska poses questions about the power of legal discourse, which affects real lives and is well-protected, routinely maintained and recognised by custom and tradition. This discourse, however, can not only protect, but also exclude and do harm. Still, by evoking certain values, it insists on its own neutrality.
The work was created in cooperation with Municipal Gallery Arsenał.
