David Önaç, a Manchester-based composer, has created a requiem to honour enslaved Africans using insurance documents from Lloyd's of London as source material.
The work was funded by Lloyd's of London after research uncovered the institution's historical links to slavery. One document examined by the project begins with "In the name of God, Amen" before detailing the trafficking of enslaved Africans, treating human beings as cargo.
Dr Errol Francis, artistic director and chief executive of the arts and heritage charity Culture&, noted the striking contradiction between the religious invocation and the commercial treatment of enslaved people in the same document.
The requiem draws on historical insurance records as a foundation for commemorating those who were enslaved and transported through the transatlantic slave trade. By using these documents directly, the composition creates a direct link between archival evidence of trafficking and artistic remembrance.
Lloyd's of London has acknowledged its historical involvement in insuring slave voyages as part of a broader institutional reckoning with its past. This commission represents one effort to examine that history through contemporary artistic practice.