2019
Painted maritime iron shackles, iron square pipe, iron plate.
h: 10 cm, w: 265 cm, d: 236 cm
Photography: Meidad Suchowolski
Day after day, somewhere, a group of desperate people attempts to reach a safer life. We scarcely hear of them anymore. We read the numbers, sigh, and move on. A line runs between The Raft of the Medusa and these numbers: the abandonment of the poor to their fate by those in power.
In Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal, the surviving passengers of the “Méduse,” J.-B. Henry Savigny and Alexandre Corréard, recount the betrayal by the ship’s higher-ranking passengers as it went down. Fifteen survived. One hundred and thirty-five drowned in torment.
The work bears witness to the lost life of each drowned migrant in the form of a uniquely rusted maritime shackle – a kind of Name – lying still upon the floor. Their silence is the abandoned’s own j’accuse.
