A giant paper boat? Art’s response to migrant drownings should be way more aggressive

Vik Muniz’s floating installation Lampedusa – made of newspaper articles about migrant deaths – will float equivocally beside the superyachts at this year’s Venice Biennale. With the death toll mounting, that’s simply not enough

The death of perhaps as many as 900 people in the Mediterranean this week – murdered by the prevailing European, including British, attitude towards migrants as surely as they were killed by human traffickers – comes a few weeks before one of the Mediterranean world’s most flamboyant displays of wealth and luxury starts.

Venice is on the Adriatic, but it has long been one of the great Mediterranean empires, ruling islands such as Crete and Cyprus and trading between the sea’s African, Asian and European shores. Today, the cruise ships loom over Renaissance palaces. Every two years, art collectors’ superyachts moor for the Venice Biennale.

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