Absolut No Return

This image depicts the ocean outside the “door of no return” at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana. The door is infamous for being the last stop for enslaved Africans before they were loaded on ships destined for the Americas during the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Notice that the doorway takes the shape of an Absolut Vodka bottle. Thomas connects the legitimate trade of European liquor with the inhumane trade of enslaved people. In doing so, he not only indicts European slave traders, but also certain African chiefs and elders whose taste for imported liquor drove them to enslave other Africans.