JULIEN BONET - Migrant

Technique: Promptography on Hahnemühle Fine Art paper
Size: 50 x 40 cm
Edition: 3 + 1 AP
Year: 2024-25

Signed, dated and edition numbered by the artist on a separate label.

Migrant

A body concealed in an improvised shell: rusted metal, wrapped in nets, a makeshift cocoon of chance and necessity. Bonet's migrant is neither hero nor victim—he is a shadow on the threshold, caught between arrival and departure. The sea behind him speaks of that passage that claims countless lives, pierced by hope and torn by risk.

Politically, this figure mirrors our times. Migration, once seen as an exception, has long since become a fundamental constant of global interconnectedness – driven by war, climate, and inequality. Europe, aging and hungry for work, needs migration, but the promise of security is met with walls of fear, bureaucracy, and nationalist rhetoric. Bonet's figure stands in this tension: She makes visible what is displaced – the bodies lost in the transition.

The nets not only envelop the body, they also capture a narrative: of human trafficking and smuggling, of illusions of a "better life" that often shatter in pain. Families pay the price, often with the absence of their loved ones. But beyond the numbers and headlines, the image asks: How do we define humanity when borders become harder than the seas?

In the Masquerades series, the migrant is one of the most haunting figures—not because they provide answers, but because they force silence. A silence that creates space for an urgently needed debate: How can a society that needs migration create ways to shape it in a humane way?