Justice Pending

2026, Oil on Italian Linen, 101.6 x 101.6cm

This work considers how authority is invested in objects that stand in for larger systems. Justice depends upon symbols of certainty and finality, yet the institutions behind them are neither infallible nor immune to failure. Here, authority is recast as something inherently fragile, already broken and undergoing repair.

The act of Kintsugi repair does not conceal the damage or return the object to an idealised state. Its fractures remain part of its history. The repair is an acknowledgement of failure rather than its erasure, and it proposes a model of justice shaped by the possibility of revision. Here, authority is not presented as absolute, but as something negotiated through failure, rehabilitation, and dialogue.

Within the broader series, value and authority are repeatedly reassigned through material, context and intervention. Here, the question is whether a flawed system loses legitimacy by admitting its failures, or gains it through the attempt to repair them. Justice remains pending: neither restored nor abandoned, but defined by the ongoing terms of its reconstruction.