Curated by soft power

Based on a fictional legal system, Corpus Iuris Artis unfolds as an exhibition and performance cycle in which Selin Davasse questions, codifies, institutionalizes, and ultimately puts on trial what constitutes ethical artistic or curatorial practice today, with a satirical edge. Corpus Iuris Artis is a body of work revolving around a body of law enacted by a body in space. The "body of law" is a penal code for art professionals drawn up by the body in space based on the art world's own representational claims and ethical posturing.

Selin Davasse's exhibition Corpus Iuris Artis: II. The Hearing at soft power revolves around the fictional "Court of Ethical Reckoning in the Arts." In a playful attempt at imagining which legal norms, instruments and procedures could bring about art world justice, Davasse speculates on how these tools and processes would be implemented in common professional scenarios. As the artist adopts the roles of the various parties involved, she challenges our own respective positions; our sincerity, complicity and liability. After all, ignorantia iuris non excusat ("ignorance of the law does not absolve").

Corpus Iuris Artis: II. The Hearing is presented at soft power as part of Berlin Art Week Featured 2025, in cooperation with Pickle Bar's presentation of Davasse's performance Corpus Iuris Artis: III. The Appeal.

Selin Davasse (b. 1992, Ankara) lives and works in Berlin. Her performances repurpose various textual and performative techniques to speculate on the ethics of hospitality between a bestial feminine stranger, a heterogeneous public and the institutions framing their encounter. Embodying different narrative selves—each with her own syntax, voice, gestures, and postures—she translates systems of thought into intimate and playful utterances that slip between speech and song, forming a porous and unstable relationship with the viewer.

Her works have been presented at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024); Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2024); Art Asia Now, Paris (2023); steirischer herbst, Graz (2023); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2023); Institute for Contemporary Arts, London (2023); Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara (2023); Kunsthalle Bratislava (2022); Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana (2022); Wiener Festwochen, Vienna (2022); MEDITERRANEA19 Young Artists Biennale, San Marino (2021); Volksbühne, Berlin (2021); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, (2021).