Ship of Fools draws upon the iconography of Hieronymus Bosch’s 'Ship of Fools' in the collection of the Louvre, a highly influential panel painted at the end of the fifteenth century or the beginning of the sixteenth that critiques the misbehaviour of contemporary clergy. The migrants in Wiley’s 'Ship of Fools' are, unlike Bosch’s clergy, not depicted as fools; instead, the painting poses the question of whether their quest for a better life is foolish in the context of a world that typically ignores their desperation. The painting includes in the background the ghostly spectre of an righteenth-century warship as a pointed reference to the histories of colonialism and slavery that often shape contemporary migration patterns. While other paintings from this group of works are portraits of specific migrants, the figures in Ship of Fools are composites, stand-ins for the thousands and millions of people currently in search of better lives.