Missing Migrants of the Mediterranean
-Isabella Przybylska, GSP Blog Team Contributor
Missing Migrants of the Mediterranean is an art exhibit at the Weiser Hall Art Gallery which gives voice to the families of migrants who have gone missing in the life-threatening journey from North Africa to Europe. As highlighted in the exhibit, the Mediterranean accounts for two thirds of all migrant fatalities and disappearances worldwide. 2018 saw a total of 3,190 migrant fatalities worldwide, 2,043 of which occurred in the Mediterranean. Most of these deaths are associated with drowning, and those who have disappeared on the journey are generally presumed to have drowned, though other social and political factors may also play a role in their disappearances. Another major difference between the presumed fatalities of the Mediterranean is in that word “presumed;” over 1,000 of the fatalities recorded in the region are “presumed drownings,” meaning that the victims’ remains have not been recovered and their true fate is unknown. This is in sharp contrast to other regions, where only a small minority of deaths are unaccounted for.
For families of the victims, this means years of waiting without any knowledge of the loved one’s whereabouts, while local and international governments do little to achieve justice for these families. This is the main point which the exhibit drives home; the years of waiting, uncertain whether it is appropriate to mourn or to hold out with hope, all while fighting for justice.
Upon entering the room, the visitor to the exhibit finds themselves in an immersive experience, with audio playing in the background, informational panels on the walls which include both quotes and statistics, and a central art exhibit where visitors are welcome to leave a note of solidarity for the families awaiting their missing loved ones.
The exhibit itself was headed by Assistant Professor Odessa Gonzalez Benson, who led a collaboration with U-M’s School of Social Work, School of Information, Taubman College of Urban Planning and Architecture, and the Tunisian association La Terre Pour Tous. The exhibit successfully incorporates the areas of expertise of each of these groups, with illustrated data, firsthand accounts from families, and the interactive art exhibit which encourages visitor engagement. In Professor Gonzales Benson’s words, the team “hope[s] to synthesize social justice and advocacy with design and technology in the form of public scholarship.”
The reality is, missing and disappeared people are rarely talked about because there is so much inherently unknown about their stories. This exhibit does a phenomenal job at capturing their stories in the most comprehensive way possible, through statistics, information, and most importantly, through capturing the silence families find themselves in after the disappearance of a loved one. Visitors are able to - even if only for a moment - experience that feeling of time stopping, and realize the scale at which this problem exists in our world today.