The Dead Pool

At the base of the artwork is The Dead Pool, populated with 47 glow-in-the-dark skulls and 15 victims of assassination (or state-approved execution)

Those most beloved amongst us who are assassinated are often also the most hated.

Jamal Khashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi

Date: October 2, 2018

Location: İstanbul, Consulate of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in İstanbul

Assassin(s): 15 members of the Saudi hit team  closely connected to Mohammed bin Salman.

Investigation results

“We should not need to be reminded of the value of human life.”

Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia

Date: October 16, 2017

Location: Bidnija, Malta

Assassin(s): unknown, car bomb

Investigation into the circumstances of the car bomb attack

“I don’t think standards can fall any further, really, unless we catch Joseph Muscat fornicating with a sheep on a bed of hard cash laundered by Brian Tonna while Keith Schembri films the action and John Dalli has a gunfight two feet away with Manuel Mallia’s chauffeur and the Commissioner of Police. And even then, thousands of people will say: “\’It’s their private life’ and ‘But where’s the proof?’”

Denis Voronenkov

Denis Voronenkov

Date: March 23, 2017

Location: Kyiv, Ukraine

Assassin(s): Pavel Parshov. Ukrainian prosecutors believe that it had been a contract killing (arranged by an FSB officer) while the country’s then-president, Petro Poroshenko, alleged that it had been orchestrated by the Russian government under the direction of Vladimir Putin.

Investigation results

“We need to be careful. We are poking a sore spot of the Kremlin with our statements.”

Berta Cáceres

Berta Cáceres

Date: March 3, 2016

Location: La Esperanza, Honduras

Assassin(s): 3 of the 8 arrested people were linked to the US-trained elite military troops: two had been trained at the former School of the Americas (SOA).

Investigation results

“Wake up, humanity! There is no more time.”

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

Date: May 2, 2011

Location: Abbottabad, Pakistan

Assassin(s): SEAL Team Six) in a CIA-led operation with Joint Special Operations Command, ordered by President Barack Obama

“How is it right for you to occupy our countries and kill our women and children and expect to live in peace and security? … the equation is clear: you are killed as you kill and abducted as you abduct …”

Alexander Litvienko

Alexander Litvinenko

Date: November 23, 2006

Location: Bloomsbury, London, United Kingdom

Assassin(s): Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun by polonium poisoning

Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko

You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price, you may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.”

Yitzak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin

Date: November 4, 1995

Location: Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

Assassin(s): Yigal Amir

Assassination details

“We must think differently, look at things in a different way. Peace requires a world of new concepts, new definitions.”

Pablo Escobar

Pablo Escobar

Date: December 2, 1993

Location: Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia

Assassin(s): Members of the Colombian National Police

“All empires are created of blood and fire.”

Cardinal Óscar Romero

Cardinal Óscar Romero

Date: March 24, 1980

Location: San Salvador, El Salvador

Assassin(s): The UN-created Truth Commission for El Salvador concluded that Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, founder of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) political party, had ordered the killing.

Investigation results

“I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression.”

Robert F Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy

Date: June 5, 1968

Location: Ambassador Hotel kitchen, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Assassin(s): Sirhan Sirhan

“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Date: June 5, 1968

Location: Lorraine Motel, Memphis, TN, USA

Assassin(s): James Earl Ray

“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plain of dignity and discipline.”

Che Guevara

Che Guevara

Date: October 9, 1967

Location: La Higuera, Vallegrande, Bolivia

Assassin(s): Mario Terán, a Bolivian soldier

“There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.”

Malcolm X

Malcolm X

Date: February 25, 1965

Location: Audubon Ballroom, Manhattan, USA

Assassin(s): William 25X (also known as William Bradley), who fired the shotgun; Leon Davis; and Thomas Hayer

“You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker”

Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Date: January 30, 1948

Location: Birla House, New Delhi, India

Assassin(s): Nathuram Vinayak Godse, his collaborator Narayan Apte, and six more, deemed co-defendants

“If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Date: April 15, 1865

Location: Ford Theater, Washington, DC, USA

Assassin(s): John Wilkes Booth 

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations”