The Right not to Drown: Data Visualisation in Contemporary Art

Counter-mapping and counter-data visualisation are employed by artists to reframe migration narratives, often focusing on retracing the journeys of migrants. However, the maps of those who never made it have not received the same attention. This article examines three artistic visualisations that address infographics of people who have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean has been described as a stage for necropolitics; it is both the deadliest border and the most visualised migration route to the EU. In Mapping Global Refugee Migration and Displacement (2015–), Tiffany Chung uses data to map migration routes and deaths in the Mediterranean. Her hand-drawn maps, marked with colourful dots representing lives lost, lack a key, rendering the visualisation deliberately ambiguous. In Those Who Did Not Cross 2005–2015 (2017), Levi Westerveld places a red dot for each person who died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean. Finally, in Nautical Charts of Sunken Boats (2021), Mathieu Pernot recontextualises historical maps of the Mediterranean by inscribing migrant shipwrecks on them that he read about in the paper. The handwritten annotations are often difficult to read. Each artist traces the ongoing catastrophe of death at sea through maps, questioning the role that cartography and data visualisation play in the documentation of mass loss. Through “The Right Not to Drown,” as introduced by Hilde Van Gelder, this article explores what justice and resistance look like when the dead are memorialised through maps of Mediterranean deaths.