Transitional justice and the arts: Reflections on the field

The arts present both a catalyst mechanism and an important information and reparation tool to support societies in transition. Artworks speak of the challenges of transition, foster, and, on occasion, hinder transitional processes. The artistic expressions can provide informal counterparts for the most significant mechanisms of transitional justice: truth and reconciliation process, public lustration, public apology, psychological reparation, demand for public access to governmental records, and others. They can also stimulate awareness of the need to implement transitional justice mechanisms in societies that do not otherwise perceive themselves as being “transitional”. In any of these cases, such unofficial probing of transition exposes the commensurabilities and disparities between the general reading of the rule of law and its local perception, and the external and the internal practices in place to promote legality in a given community.