The four paintings in this series examine the “ethic of love” under the canon of scholar and activist bell hooks and celebrate the power of healing and liberation from systems of domination.

By Ximena Velázquez-Arenas ’23

The paintings are currently on exhibit at Berkeley Law on the second floor near the main reading room. Click on images to see larger high-resolution versions.

Good Law

The first painting, “Good Law,” carries the jagged edges of legal history across nearly three centuries. It presents the building blocks most influential in the development of U.S. legal jurisprudence, which weave into the cultural norms governing behavior today. A physical manifestation of the painful process for those on the receiving end of the law’s violent and colonial origins, “Good Law” encourages viewers to wrestle with their role inside and outside legal systems to shape the future.

Gold, black and red patterned painting with text of the titles of Supreme Court cases interspersed

Portrait of a Native woman seated in blue dress, white flowered headdress, in front a red curtain, with books beside her and green hills in the background

Native Royalty

In defiant celebration against “Good Law,” “Native Royalty” portrays the hope and power within the Indigenous experience across the Americas. A Tehuana woman sits calmly and sovereign in the vastness of a thriving natural world. The flowers in her hair symbolize rebirth and joy, a prayer for generational healing to flow through future Native peoples and their work in this world. She carries history within her, but does not forget to write her own. “Native Royalty” honors the strength to thrive against imperialism and recognizes that the story of liberation continues to unfold.

The Poet

By the seaside stands “The Poet.” This portrait of Berkeley Law alum Aida Rogers ’23, a renaissance scholar, poet, musician, dancer, and student of liberatory love, examines the norms imposed on us through colonial legacy and common law and asks who we are outside oppression and the reductive classifications that fuel it. “The Poet” explores and celebrates Aida’s most authentic self, breaking free from subjugation by trusting in her art and its power.

Portrait of Aida Rogers by the sea with flowers

A portrait of Paul Murray seated in judicial robes, overlaid with squares of textured color

Love as Liberation

The last in the series, “Love as Liberation,” honors the late Pauli Murray LL.M. ’45, a civil rights activist, legal scholar, author, and Episcopal priest. Murray’s life as a Black, gender- nonconforming, queer advocate was an affront to social and legal systems that persist today. Despite extensive pioneering work, which included providing the legal strategy used to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, Murray’s legacy remains largely in the shadows. In this portrait, Murray is clothed in the cassock historically reserved for male priests and crowned with baby’s breath, a flower symbolizing spirituality and everlasting love, as love was present in all of Murray’s work.