Keeping death at a distance

At this year’s Venice Biennale, Swiss-Icelandic artist Christoph Büchel’s installation (Our Boat) is the talking point. The wreckage of the fishing boat departing from Libya on its way to Europe, which sank in the Mediterranean in 2015, drowning most of its passengers – up to 1,100 migrants – has been turned into a public work of art. The wreckage of the boat, with an irreparable split on the port side offering a window into the hollowed hold, will sit in the Arsenale, Venice’s historic shipyard, from May until the exhibition ends. “The project facilitates a symbolic transfer of the status of the shipwreck,” explains the press release issued by the artist. “[It] changes its legal status from a former object of, a significant symbol of our ‘interesting times’ and collective complicity and memory.”