Courtney McClellan 2019/2020 WAP Artist Talk
Channel: Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia
Date: 2021-03-03

Artist Talk (Via Zoom) for MOCA GA held on March 2, 2021 in conjunction with the 2019/2020 MOCA GA Working Artist Project. Courtney McClellan, 2019/20 WAP fellow created work for her solo exhibition entitled: Simulations.
Exhibition dates: January 30, 2021 - March 27, 2021

For more than six years, artist Courtney McClellan has studied the relationship between performance and the law. Her inquiry centers on the legal simulations and professional practices used to educate future attorneys. During trial simulation, students may play the role of lawyer, witness, or judge in the courtroom. Their actions are often theatrical and their assertions are often speculative. Curator Robert Blackson said, “Simulation is practice in service to theory.”

Simulations is a photo installation that includes images of practice courtrooms at law schools across the American South. The series depicts spaces that simultaneously function as courtroom, classroom, and theater. These sites occasionally host the actual adjudication of law, for example a state appellate case, and thus blur the boundaries between real and staged experience. McClellan’s images address this interwoven architecture of training, performance, and power.