Four years ago, after a large shipping vessel carrying around 800 migrants sank in the Mediterranean, Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the United Nations’ refugee agency, waited at a port to meet the few rescued survivors.

The memory of their faces, their wide and shocked eyes, and the way the ship looked when it was finally recovered from the sea, “will always be with me,” she said.

“And now this boat is here in Venice at the Biennale, and it will be seen by the world.”

The boat embarked from Libya and sunk after it crashed into a Portuguese vessel that was attempting to help the migrants on board, many of whom stuck in the boat’s hold, where they drowned.

It was a nightmarish disaster.

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

Hundreds of bodies were later recovered; others never were. The identities of some of those who died on board remain unknown.

A little over a year after it sank, authorities recovered remnants of the ship.

And this year, Swiss Icelandic artist Christoph Büchel brought the massive ship to Venice, where it’s now on display at the Venice Biennale, the large, contemporary art fair that will likely be visited by hundreds of thousands of people over the next few months.

Mr Büchel calls the project “Barca Nostra,” or “Our Boat”.

Displaying the ship, a news release about the project said, “opens up the possibility of actively using the collective shipwreck Barca Nostra as a vehicle of significant sociopolitical, ethical, and historical importance”.

But seeing the boat propped up as part of an art exhibition left Ms Sami with “mixed feelings.”

She was in Venice this week for the opening of another exhibit, one organised by UNHCR that features the work of refugee artists.

On Friday, the same day Ms Sami visited the ship in Venice and stood before it, taking in its size and reflecting on those who died when it sunk, another boat carrying migrants capsized in the Mediterranean, this time off the coast of Tunisia.

Dozens of people are believed to have died.

“I feel this cannot be considered a relic of the past,” she said of the ship on display in Venice. “Today, a new shipwreck is telling us that that boat is our present.”

The ship’s presence at the biennale came after two tragedies: first, the shipwreck itself, and later, the death of Sebastiano Tusa, an Italian marine archaeologist who was killed when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi in March, killing everyone on board.

Giovanni Angileri, chief of staff of the Sicilian cultural heritage department, told CNN that Mr Tusa, who also served as a cultural heritage councillor for Sicily, was passionate about ensuring the boat be displayed to the public, and said that after the biennale, the boat will become an open-air museum in Augusta, Italy.

“The last note [Mr Tusa] sent me was about the project,” Mr Angileri told CNN. “It is a very important project, that boat is the symbol both of the human tragedy and of the political crisis that the migrant flow is causing to all of Europe.”

More than a million migrants and refugees reached Europe by crossing the Mediterranean in 2015.

Refugee crisis: More than 500 migrants rescued in single day in Mediterranean Sea

Last year, just more than 116,000 made it, but the rate of death on the journey increased.

In 2015, one person died for every 269 who arrived safely on European shores. Last year, one died for every 51 safe arrivals.

The boat’s display in Venice, if even for the purpose of raising awareness about the plight of migrants at sea, left some feeling somewhat uneasy.

As Philip Kennicott, art and architecture critic for The Washington Post, put it: ”I feel like the lives of those who died here need to be disentangled from this magnificent carnival of visual consumption.”

“I try to do it this way,” he wrote.

“As a light rain falls, I put down my umbrella and look up at the underside of the wooden deck and imagine that this is the last thing I will ever see.”