We are no strangers today to visual representations of human suffering at sea: the refugee crisis that continues to play out in the seascape between Europe and Africa (and not only there) yields an ever-growing archive of humanitarian tragedy. As both a visual backdrop and a lethal medium of unequal mobility, maritime space and landscape play a significant role in mediating the ethical demands of this crisis. Yet there has been little exploration of the longer history of morality’s role in ...

It is no coincidence that a historical figure such as Patrice Emery Lumumba, independent Congo’s first prime minister, who was killed in 1961, has lived in the realm of the cultural imaginary and occupied an afterlife in the arts. After all, his project remained unfinished and his corpse unburied. The figure of Lumumba has been imagined through painting, photography, cinema, poetry, literature, theatre, music, sculpture, fashion, cartoons and stamps, and also through historiography and in p...