In 2000 Christoph Schlingensief reflected on the question of who has right to protection and asylum with his notorious participative performance “Please love Austria –

First Austrian Coalition Week”. Twelve (supposed) asylum-seekers were housed in a shipping container undergoing continuous surveillance in a reality-tv format similar [...]

The so-called “Benin Bronzes” that decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin (in modern-day Nigeria), are now part of a fundamental debate around questions of

ownership. Mostly seized by British forces during the colonial period, these bronzes constitute for many European art museums a juridical, moral, and political challenge. In [...]

When the unofficial refugee camp in Idomeni, Northern Greece, was cleared and thousands of people were forced to leave their makeshift accommodations, many personal belongings

were left behind. The artist Ai Weiwei collected the abandoned items of clothing and showed them washed, steamed, and organized in his exhibition “Laundromat” [...]

This caricature by Honoré Daumier from 1869 shows a group of clerics trying to blow out a flame symbolizing freedom of expression. While the depicted image explicitly deals

with this fundamental right, the medium of caricature itself, independent of its subject, has always had a role in defending freedom of (artistic) expression. [...]

A court in San Francisco dealt with this issue until late 2018. The animal rights advocacy group PETA filed a lawsuit against the photographer David Slater for the rights to

the picture a macaque took of itself in 2011. This monkey selfie opened up a discussion, and several lawsuits, on whether an animal has a claim to copyright and its [...]

The Zeppelin-Museum takes a critical look at the history of its art collection in the current exhibition “Eigentum verpflichtet” (The Obligation of Ownership). The exhibition

endeavors to represent the networks through which art works were dealt and ended up in its collection in the period after WWII. [...]

In the US images and data of people who have been arrested by law enforcement agencies are made publicly available on so-called “mug shot websites”. By blurring the photographic

records and shuffling the personal data in his artwork “Obscurity”, Paolo di Cirio makes it impossible to identify the arrestee. [...]

The “duran adam“ (turk. for „standing man“), a performance by the dancer and choreographer Erdem Gündüz, employs simple means in order to raise awareness on the fundamental

right of freedom of expression. In 2013, during the protests around Gezi Park against the policies of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the artist stood staring silently [...]

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the German Grundgesetz (Basic Law) the research group “The Nomos of Images. Manifestation and Iconology of Law” presents examples

of artistic engagement with different principles that regard questions of fundamental rights, such as the right to privacy, the right to asylum, gender equality and [...]

Avant la soutenance de sa thèse prévue le mardi 23 avril à 14h30 à l’Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Marie-Sophie de Clippele intervient dans un séminaire doctoral

à l’ENS Paris-Saclay le mercredi 27 mars à 14h (bâtiment Laplace, salle Pollack). [...]