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ABSTRACT
Long considered a cultural contact zone, the Mediterranean has become a weaponised border zone keeping refugees from Africa and the Middle East away from ‘Fortress Europe’. The Mediterranean has become excessively dangerous to cross, leading many commentators to call this maritime space a ‘massive graveyard’. The widespread indifference and enmity towards migrants in Europe is, amongst other things, countered by documentary and commemorative projects by artists drawing attention to the suffering of drowned refugees. In this paper, I zoom in on documentary and memorial artistic projects by Mimmo Paladino, Jason deCaires Taylor, Christoph Büchel, Ai Weiwei and Đỉnh Q. Lê. In the frequent absence of dead bodies and specific grave sites on the ‘high seas’, they make claims regarding the humanity, singularity and memorability of the human lives of refugees drowned at sea. Based on a description of the artworks and their public, I make two interlinked theoretical arguments. First, the commemorative materialisations by contemporary artists are temporal claims to constitute the cultural heritage of the future. Second, given the sea’s aquatic materiality, the commemorative claims of these art projects require that commemorative materialisations must spatially move from the flux of the sea to the fixity of the land.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Statement made by Angela Markel ‘Wir schaffen das’. Available at: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wir_schaffen_das (accessed March 22, 2023).
2. ‘Genocide’ charged as boat capsizes in Mediterranean”. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/19/africa/italy-migrant-boat-capsizes/index.html (accessed March 22, 2023).
3. ‘Death of Alan Kurdi’. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alan_Kurdi (accessed March 22, 2023).
4. ‘2023 Calabria migrant boat disaster’. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Calabria_migrant_boat_disaster (accessed March 23, 2023).
5. ‘Ai Weiwei poses as drowned Syrian child Alan Kurdi in photograph’. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/ai-weiwei-alan-kurdi-syria/index.html (accessed March 23, 2023).
6. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barca_Nostra (accessed March 23, 2023).
7. For a lucid and helpful distinction between marine and maritime, see Roszko (Citation2021).
8. Fishers, freighters and rescue operators are subject to Frontex discipline on the high seas, meaning that in contravention to maritime law they are strongly discouraged or forbidden to pick up drowning migrants; See ‘EU border agency “has failed to protect asylum seekers” rights’, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15/eu-border-agency-has-failed-to-protect-asylum-seekers-rights; ‘“I was close to death”: Syrian man tells how Greek officials pushed refugees back out to sea’, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/31/i-was-close-to-death-syrian-man-tells-how-greek-officials-pushed-refugees-back-out-to-sea; and ‘Aid workers say Mediterranean a “liquid graveyard” after 75 feared dead off Libya’, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/22/aid-workers-say-mediterranean-a-liquid-graveyard-after-75-feared-dead-off-libya (accessed March 23, 2023).
9. ‘Mare Nostrum Operation’ Available at: https://www.marina.difesa.it/EN/operations/Pagine/MareNostrum.aspx (accessed March 23, 2023).
10. However, this situation may alter over time for those ‘successful’ refugees, migrants, and their descendants in ways that may well parallel current the expansion of the art canon (which arguably is part of global heritage) towards the inclusion of female, Black, Asian, queer/LGBT artists of past and present in ‘permanent’ museum exhibitions. Nonetheless, it remains too early to know whether, and in what form, this anticipatory heritage will ‘materialise’.
11. See https://www.cobosocial.com/dossiers/the-deep-blue-sea/ and ‘Dinh Q. Lê’s Deep Blue See at Art Basel Hong Kong’, available at: https://artisalive.co.uk/2017/03/26/dinh-q-les-deep-blue-see-at-art-basel-hong-kong/ (accessed 31 March 2023).
12. See https://kunsthalcharlottenborg.dk/da/udstillinger/ai-weiwei-soleil-levant/. Other, similar installations by Ai Weiwei of life vests mounted to structures took place in Berlin, February 2016 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/ai-weiwei-life-jackets-installation-berlin-427247, and Quebec City, August 2022 https://www.dezeen.com/2022/08/16/ai-weiwei-life-jackets-quebec-city/# (accessed March 31, 2023).
13. See https://www.tangcontemporary.com/refutationen (accessed April 1, 2023).
14. See ‘Mediterranean Sea: migrant routes in art’, available at: https://www.artmajeur.com/en/magazine/5-art-history/mediterranean-sea-migrant-routes-in-art/331639; ‘Art and the refugee “crisis”: Mediterranean blues’, available at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/art-and-refugee-crisis-mediterranean-blues/; ‘Manifesta 12: The Dark Heart of the Biennial Shows Human Suffering Out of Control’, available at: https://www.frieze.com/article/manifesta-12-dark-heart-biennial-shows-human-suffering-out-control; ‘At Manifesta, Artists Address Italy’s Migrant Crisis’, available at: https://hyperallergic.com/459887/at-manifesta-artists-address-italys-migrant-crisis/; and ‘Ai Weiwei covers historic Quebec City rampart in refugee life jackets’https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/artworks-migration-2019 (accessed April 1, 2023).
15. ‘Vatican sculpture dedicated to migrants unveiled’, available at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49886953 (accessed April 1, 2023).
16. ‘Ministry of Defence condemns “desecration” of Royal Navy wrecks’, available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65724795 (accessed May 30, 2023).
17. See https://underwatermuseumlanzarote.com/en/info-museo-atlantico/; “Europe’s first underwater sculpture museum – in pictures, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/feb/02/europes-first-underwater-sculpture-museum-in-pictures (accessed May 30, 2023); Meyers (Citation2020).
18. See Jason deCaires Taylor, available at: https://www.underwatersculpture.com/ (accessed May 30, 2023).
19. ‘Museum under the Sea’, available at: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=682951778512999 (accessed May 30, 2023).
20. For an overview of artworks in the database, see https://www.migrazionieuropadiritto.it/atlante-adia/atlante-adia-opere/ (accessed April 2, 2023).
21. In Auschwitz the exhibition of objects left behind by Holocaust victims produces a highly emotive effect.
22. For example, there are Holocaust memorials in many different countries where the Holocaust did not take place, or that were (directly) affected by the Holocaust. Sometimes, there are hardly Holocaust survivors or descendants living in countries with such memorials. Similarly, many (North-Atlantic) countries have (maritime) museums that in the present day and age pay attention to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, sometimes in places with only tenuous connections to historical enslavement and slavery. Usually, the rationale for paying attention to and – indeed – commemorating these horrific events is to educate (privileged, liberal) publics around the world about these events and their historical aftermaths. In other words, sites and objects of memorialisation and commemoration do not necessarily or exclusively have to be in places close to where the events occurred nor have to exclusively address publics that are direct descendants of those people whose plight is commemorated.
23. See https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2019/partecipants/christoph-b%C3%BCchel (accessed 1 April 2023).
24. ‘Wrecked migrant ship displayed by Christhoph Büchel returns to Sicily as memorial’, available at: https://www.artforum.com/news/migrant-ship-displayed-by-christoph-buechel-returns-to-sicily-as-memorial-85537; ‘A migrant ship with tragic history is at the Venice Biennale. A new migrant boat sinking shows its more than a relic’, available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/10/migrant-ship-with-tragic-history-is-venice-biennale-new-migrant-boat-sinking-shows-its-more-than-relic/; ‘Fierce debate over Christhop Büchel’s Venice Biennale display of boat that sank with hundreds locked in hull’, available at: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/05/14/fierce-debate-over-christoph-buchels-venice-biennale-display-of-boat-that-sank-with-hundreds-locked-in-hull; and ‘We’ve chosen the best of the art in Venice, now here’s the worst’, available at: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/05/10/weve-chosen-the-best-of-the-art-in-venice-now-heres-the-worst (accessed May 30, 2023).
25. ‘The best art is built on morality – the Venice Biennale’s migrant boat is not’, available at: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/venice-biennale-migrant-boat-christoph-buchel-morality-290815 (accessed at May 30, 2023).
26. ‘Artist awash in the land of refugees’, available at: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/20160215-ai-weiwei-tribute-to-syrian-refugee-aylan-kurdi-828413–2016-02-03; ‘Ai Weiwei poses as drowned Syrian Infant refugee in “hunting” photo’, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/feb/01/ai-weiwei-poses-as-drowned-syrian-infant-refugee-in-haunting-photo; and ‘Ai Weiwei hits a New Low by Crassly Recreating photo of Drawned Syrian Toddler’, available at: https://news.artnet.com/market/ai-weiwei-reenactment-drowned-syrian-toddler-417275 (accessed at May 30, 2023).
27. ‘Ai Weiwei makes bold statement about the refugee crisis with giant inflatable boat’, available at: https://mashable.com/article/ai-weiwei-biennale-of-sydney; and ‘The refugee crisis isn’t about refugees. It is about us’, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/02/refugee-crisis-human-flow-ai-weiwei-china (accessed May 30, 2023).
28. ‘Berliner Konzerthaus: Ai Weiwei erinnert mit Schwimmwesten an ertrunkene Flüchtlinge [Berlin Concert Hall: Ai Weiwei remembers drowned refugees with life jackets]’, available at: https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000031064535/berliner-konzerthaus-ai-weiwei-erinnert-mit-schwimmwesten-an-fluechtlinge?ref=rss#forumstart (accessed May 30, 2023).
29. ‘Ai Weiwei makes bold statement about the refugee crisis with giant inflatable boat’, available at: https://mashable.com/article/ai-weiwei-biennale-of-sydney; and see https://www.tangcontemporary.com/refutationen (accessed May 30, 2023).
30. ‘China most famous, displaced artist’, available at: https://www.dw.com/en/ai-weiwei-drifting-chinas-most-famous-displaced-artist/a-39247206 (accessed May 30, 2023).
31. ‘Artist awash in the land of refugees’, available at: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/20160215-ai-weiwei-tribute-to-syrian-refugee-aylan-kurdi-828413–2016-02-03; and ‘Ai Weiwei makes bold statement about the refugee crisis with giant inflatable boat’, available at: https://mashable.com/article/ai-weiwei-biennale-of-sydney (accessed May 30, 2023).
32. Vietnamese speakers will recognise this as the title of one of Trịnh Công Sơn’s mót famous songs.
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Oscar Salemink
Oscar Salemink (1958–2023) was a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. Between 2001 and 2011 he worked at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, from 2005 as Professor of Social Anthropology, and from 1996 through 2001 he was responsible for Ford Foundation grant portfolios in social sciences and arts and culture in Thailand and Vietnam. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Amsterdam, based on research on Vietnam’s Central Highlands. His most recent work and global projects focused on heritage and contemporary arts. He published two monographs, ten edited volumes, and six themed issues of journals. His recent books are Sacralization of Heritage: Validating, authenticating and managing religious heritage and Global Art in Local Art Worlds: De-centering and Re-centering Europe in the Global Hierarchy of Value and Management of Religion (open access at https://www.routledge.com/Global-Art-in-Local-Art-Worlds-Changing-Hierarchies-of-Value/Salemink-Correa-Sejrup-Nielsen/p/book/9780367653279).