Painting Humanitarian Experiences at Sea: The Raft of the Medusa

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Abstract Taking We’re Not All in the Same Boat (2015) – Banksy’s reinterpretation of Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1819) – as its departure point, this article explores the maritime routes through which artists have produced and circulated humanitarian experiences amongst international audiences as a colourful palette of embodied practices, emotions, sensations, feelings, perceptions and thoughts. Drawing on the accounts of the Medusa’s survivors, I analyse the advocacy strategies used by Géricault in his painting to make the spectator feel the sufferings experienced by the shipwrecked aboard the raft through the hallucinations provoked by calenture: a madness which affected sailors who crossed the tropics. Ultimately, a comparison between Géricault’s and Banksy’s artworks allows us to sail on a raft – the humanitarian theatre par excellence at sea – to connect past and present-day migratory journeys through the legacies of colonialism and denounce Western immigration controls by performing solidarity towards refugees.