Wreck of migrant shipwreck returns to Sicily exhibited at 2019 Venice Biennale

Back in Sicily is the wreck of the boat of African migrants that sank in the Mediterranean on April 18, 2015, causing a massacre: of the hundreds of people carried by the vessel, an Eritrean fishing boat, only 28 survived. There were 58 ascertained victims, but it is estimated that between 700-900 people died: such was in fact the number of people on board whose bodies were never recovered. Due to its proportions, the April 18, 2015 shipwreck is one of the most serious maritime disasters that occurred in the 21st century and the worst shipwreck since the recent migrant crisis began. In 2016, the Navy had recovered the wreck from the seabed and brought it to the NATO naval base in Augusta, in the province of Syracuse.

A few years later, the Swiss artist Christoph Büchel (Basel, 1966) decided to make the wreck into a work of art, titled Barca Nostra: in 2019, he exhibited it at the Venice Biennale to make it a monument to the migrant crisis, and presented it without any signage, panels, or references. The exhibition of the wreck stirred much controversy: the idea of displaying the wreck without contextualization was criticized, the fact that many visitors took frivolous photographs in front of the work, some considered the work disrespectful of the pain that the shipwreck had caused, and still others questioned whether a “ready-made” of the tragedy could automatically rise to the status of a work of art.

Until a few days ago, the wreck had been stuck in the Venice Arsenal, abandoned, to the point that the Venice Biennale Foundation had asked the authorities to remove it, after repeatedly urging the artist and the gallery representing him (Hauser & Wirth) to return the work to the city of Augsburg, which owns it. In late December, artist Emmanuele Panzarini had also launched an appeal, #SOSforart, to find a solution to the problem. Now, however, the dispute has been positively resolved and Barca Nostra returned to Augusta last April 20.

The wreck returned to Augusta on top of a barge towed by two tugboats, and will now be placed in the Sicilian city’s dock where a “Garden of Remembrance” will be created, proposed by the April 18 Committee, which works to keep the memory of the tragedy alive. The idea of creating a garden around the wreck was born back in 2018: it will be a place that will preserve “testimony to the tragedies of migrant people, as well as a sign of respect for the victims and of high educational value for new generations,” as the Augusta City Council proposed in 2018. “We will continue to strive to make it the catalyst for initiatives of solidarity, peace and brotherhood,” Cettina Saraceno, chairwoman of the April 18 Committee, said in a note. “We will work together so that it will be a warning to those who force so much humanity into exodus and then, by raising fences on land and at sea, reject it.”

Pictured is the wreck at the Biennale. Photo by Andrea Avezzù

Wreck of migrant shipwreck returns to Sicily exhibited at 2019 Venice Biennale

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.