Fantômes de la Mer (Sea Ghosts)

Fantômes de la Mer (Missing at sea) is an artistic project intending to pay homage to the migrants, victims of trans-Mediterranean human trafficking.
We intend to give presence to the victims, ordinary people, depicting them behind a metaphoric screen of water; this thin sheet of water which could save them or engulf them, fragile, beautiful and extremely dangerous. The intention is to pay homage to the thousands of anonymous people who risk everything for a better life for themselves and their families. The exhibit will be symbolic representations of migrants "missing" at sea. Not images asking for pity, not moralizing or giving a lesson or warning, but quite simply figuring these people – those missing at sea – with a presence which was denied them in the real world where they were relegated to a marginal existence. The visuals will emphasise human dignity. They will be ordinary people but the symbolic transparent mortal frontier of the sea will have diffracted their bodies. We will use the visuals to begin a debate and discussion on the question of these invisible people, whose affirmed presence is denied in our Western world. We want to place the