The real name of this piece is in fact The Raft of Lampedusa. My initial idea was to address the problem of immigration through an interpretation of a painting, the Raft of the Medusa, painted by Géricault in 1819. This work became an icon of Romanticism because the artist chose to depict a controversial event of the day, which was the tragedy of the French frigate Medusa that took place while it was sailing to Senegal, on a mission to colonize recently-recuperated territories in Africa. The scale of the loss of life and the criminal negligence of those in command became a public scandal. More than one hundred people piled on to a raft, part of which went under water when it was loaded, and then went adrift. That's the scene the painting depicts.



The tragedy of the Medusa was, therefore, the consequence of an imperial act, to recover African colonies. The French government then gave up on its sailors, in the same way that our communities are relinquishing their humanitarian sentiment with the arrival of immigrants, mainly African, who embark under the most difficult of circumstances in the hopes of reaching one or other of the more accessible coasts of Europe, such as the Italian island of Lampedusa and the Canary Islands. The situation is critical here, because this is one of the main gateways to Europe. Due to its geographic proximity, so many of these boats arrive from Senegal. In the sculpture The Raft of Lampedusa, I've recreated the type of boat that has reached the coasts of Lanzarote and La Graciosa in the last ten years.



I believe that, in reality, we are all immigrants. It is part of the human condition to look beyond, and to try to prosper. But modern society is structured in such a way that what drives some to emigrate, and the conditions in which they do so, is nothing like how this happens in more developed countries.