A Tous Les Clandestins: What if migration were seen not as a problem but as a humanitarian need?

A story of preservation and invisible testimonies.

At the heart of the current Forgive Us Our Trespasses exhibition at Berlin’s Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, A Tous Les Clandestins by Patricia Gomez and María Jesús González stands as a powerful tribute to stories that might have otherwise disappeared. This ongoing project shines a light on the often-overlooked stories of migrants, particularly through their work in detention centers in Fuerteventura and Mauritania. Using their strappo technique, Patricia and María literally peel away layers of walls to uncover messages left behind by people trapped in the limbo of migration—signs of survival and solidarity.

During an interview with Meriem Sdiri, the artists explained that their work is not about creating art for art's sake, but rather an act of documentation, a "rescue" of the memories and struggles of individuals who passed through these hidden, temporary spaces.

"What we have done has been like a work of archaeology, of rescuing and documenting these places," Patricia notes. "We don't consider ourselves artists here, but documentarians of a problem that is all too often invisible." 

Their interview was recorded at HKW in September, where their work will remain until December 8th. In the following discussion, we explore their artistic process, the difficulties they faced in accessing these places, and how their work highlights the urgent and ongoing realities of migration—issues that remain just as important today. An audio version of this interview is available here.

Meriem: Patricia Gomez and Maria Jesus Gonzalez, we're here for your project, A Tous Les Clandestins, that brings the hidden stories of migrants into the public eye in a way that provokes deep thoughts about migration, borders and societal norms. I would love to ask you some questions about your work that you're presenting here at HKW and I wanted to start by asking about the process and the artistic methodology.

You have managed to access these camps in Fuerteventura and Mauritania, which are not easy places to access. First, how did you find them? What was the bureaucratic process behind them? And, of course, after that, I would love to talk about the technique, called Strappo, that you used to bring the wall here.

Patricia Gomez: Thank you very much, Meriem, and also to HKW for bringing our work to this magnificent exhibition.  

We have always worked with walls and with the traces that these walls retain after the building has been uninhabited or has been deactivated. We have experience working in abandoned prisons where the walls preserved many messages and testimonies of inmates who had left their thoughts on the walls, thoughts that came out of their need to express what they were feeling.

In order to be able to do this project, we had read and we had seen, especially in the press, the difficulties of migrants to get to Europe from Africa. In one of the newspapers we saw, we were very struck by a photograph of a clandestine place in the middle of the desert, where many migrants take shelter, or are housed - often by mafias - before being able to embark for Europe.. The walls of this place were completely full of these writings, of these messages that some people leave for others, so we thought of a project that would rescue these traces, since they are normally ephemeral places that can disappear, and we started to investigate based on many of these news articles. 

We talked to many journalists and people from NGOs and associations that work with migrants, and who report on the places and also the immigration policies of governments, and we found out that there was a detention centre in Nouadhibou, Mauritania, that had been closed. It was built in 2006 with money from Spanish Cooperation aid (a spanish development initiative in foreign countries). And then also in Fuerteventura, which is one of the islands of the Canary Islands and a gateway for many migrants who want to come to Spain and Europe. Fuerteventura has a detention centre that is one of the largest in Europe.

In 2013 when we wrote the project, we applied for a grant to be able to do it. We got the grant, and we started a long period of trying to find out if these places still existed, and also, trying to get permission to enter them. We made our first trip to Fuerteventura, and we wanted to talk to the Chief of Police. We spent several days trying to talk to him and he wouldn't see us, so we tried a more cultural route. We talked to the director of a museum in Las Palmas who also contacted him on our behalf but they didn't pay much attention to us there either. We were still in Las Palmas waiting, until the director of the Museum of Teruel - which is where the exhibition of this project was going to be held - spoke to the senior police chief and then he did let us in. By chance they knew each other, and so, thanks to this phone call, he let us visit the centre. If he didn't let us, we would've had to return the grant. 

Maria Jesus Gonzalez: Our background is in engraving and printing. We learnt this technique at university, but we learnt it in a very experimental way, not with a classic academic approach.

So we started working at first by tearing out the walls of historic neighbourhoods that were being demolished in Valencia, and then when we had the opportunity to enter a prison for the first time, we saw that the walls were full of writings and drawings. So we had to learn the Strappo (mural removal) restoration technique because what we wanted to conserve was not only the architecture, or the drawing this architecture would make on our canvas when we would tear out a wall or a room, but we wanted to conserve the writings and drawings. For that we needed to modify the technique that we, intuitively, based on transfer techniques and engraving, had invented in our own way or developed.

In the case of detention centres, we didn't know for sure that the drawings and scribbles were still on the walls, because we only had references from press articles by journalists who had entered there and had written that the walls were full of graphic expression: drawings and writings. We found a report from an NGO in 2008 that had managed to enter this internment centre in Nouadhibou, and that's where we saw all these drawings for the first time, but we didn't get there until 2014. It was a miracle that they were still there.

The only intervention that we have made on these pieces is to scrub the walls and reveal all those messages underneath. When we entered, the walls were painted white because the director of the centre was obsessed with the hygiene of the place.

The migrants left messages on the walls to help each other. Spain has cooperation agreements with some countries, but others are refugees or need political asylum, so on the walls you could see that they wrote, for example, "if you are from Mali don't say you are from Mali, say you are from Congo,” because there was an existing agreement, you know. So this help that they left on the walls was a little bit what the director wanted to erase with the paint. The walls seemed like some sort of palimpsest of memory, and it was a bit like painting, but in reverse, you know? Removing. And so we scrubbed the walls and stopped at the stratum where we saw that there was information. That's how these two murals in particular come from the fact that we had to do some sort of archaeological excavation work.

Meriem: I want to move to the next question that I naturally had when I came to see this, is that your work features messages taken from abandoned camps and we don't know the identities of the people who wrote them. These can raise potentially controversial questions about appropriation or even exploitation, since the migrants themselves are not considered the artist here. How do you respond to the idea that you are representing migrants' messages rather than creating your own art? Would you call this art or would you call it something else?

Patricia: Of course, we don't consider ourselves to be making a work of art, because we are not creating something that doesn't already exist. We don't really know what we could call it, but this is more a work of documentation, and also of rescue, because these walls or these messages, writings and testimonies would not be here and we wouldn't be able to see them because, apart from the fact that these places are very inaccessible, they are very invisible. They are hidden, the walls are painted over; or they are destroyed or degraded, so all this information disappears. 

What we have done has been like a work of archaeology, of rescuing and documenting these places. We don't consider ourselves artists, and we don't consider the people who have left their drawings to be artists either. They are simply people who were suffering from detention and injustice, and they have expressed this on the walls. So we can't call it art, nor can we call what we do art, but we thought it was important that these memories be preserved and what we are doing is pointing out a problem that exists and that is very invisible to the rest of society.

So now that the rest of society can see it and can reflect on it, what we have achieved with  all these writings has been to translate them so that they are even more visible, more accessible, and to know of these attempts at survival.

Then you have the videos, also, for example in the video on the right is our Senegalese friend, Cheikh Ahmadou Tidiane who came with us on this trip to Mauritania and also translated the texts that he saw on the walls and it was at that moment that we recorded them, because we wanted to learn from his raw interpretation. There was a lot of writing in Arabic, a lot of writing in French, in English, in Wolof, in many other languages that we don't speak, so he also translated them, therefore it's easier to understand what these walls say.

Meriem: So now that you have mentioned the man that we can see in the video, who helped you with the translation. Who is he? How did you meet him?

Maria:  Cheikh arrived in Spain seven years before we met him. He had made three attempts to get to Spain; he tried to take the patera (a boat in which they try to cross the Gibraltar Strait) three times, the third time he made it. He spent eleven days lost at sea until he was rescued. We met him seven years later and he started working with my family helping my father who was ill at the time. So in order to get a residency permit, it was essential to have a work contract, which was made for him. He also helped Patricia and I many times as an assistant in many projects, and we have taken him with us on countless others. 

When he told us his story of arrival it was full of holes because he didn't want to remember it. It was us who insisted because we were interested in knowing about the route he had taken to get from Senegal to Spain. He tried to remember for us. We wanted to apply for a grant and we asked him to come with us on the trip. He was the one who guided us, also, along all these paths that he had travelled before, but it was very difficult, because when we first conceived the project in Spain, he didn't remember much. When we first arrived at the internment camp in Nouadhibou, he went into one of the cells and he started to recall everything and he said, “I was in this cell”.

Afterwards, in a very spontaneous way, he took his video camera and started to translate all the texts, which we had never agreed upon before, it was spontaneous, and that's when we started to record all this and that video was made.  Meriem: I think this brings me naturally to my next question: how can you explain the causes of migration? What are the economic interests behind that? What are the reasons that push these people to leave their countries? And then on the other side, what are the political interests of the EU and some African countries? Especially North Africa. Patricia:  In the countries of origin of migrants who want to come to Spain from the West African coasts, well, above all, it's the lack of opportunity, the wars, which are increasing in number and growing in mass.

Now, the route that we have documented, which was deactivated, was reactivated two or three years ago due to the continuous armed conflicts that beset almost all the countries in this area, also due to social unrest and climate change.  For example, in the coastal countries such as Senegal or Mauritania, many of them have international, governmental agreements to receive cooperation and development aid. But, this entails a counterpart, which is to act as Europe's border, but outside of Europe's borders. In other words, in Africa, these detention centres are built, the borders are controlled and monitored so that people who want to leave cannot leave, and the exit is made very difficult, even with transit visas.

It's so difficult that many have only an illegal option, which is to embark and risk their lives - although they can arrive at a place where they are detained and deported again. Many of these agreements with African countries take care of returning migrants that arrive but then sending them back to countries that are not even their own, because with some countries they do have return agreements and with others they do not. So it’s a policy that always favours Europe and never favours the countries of origin, so of course people are inclined to leave their home country. 

Meriem: I want to talk about the concept of abandonment. How you found these camps abandoned kind of represents how our society treats immigrants or refugees. Do you think this symbolises how immigrants are being treated when they are not anymore needed for political or economic reasons? So, when they close a camp, it’s because they don't have any more economic reasons to keep it open, beyond the humanitarian reason why they should work with the immigrants.

Maria: When we got to the end of our investigation we realised that this had become a business deal, but it was a business deal for everyone: for the Canary Islands, for the company in charge of the cayucos (boats that migrants use), for the company that supplies the chemical toilets, the company that takes the food to the CIEs (detention camps). Even when we arrived at the CIE El Matorral there was still a police force, without migrants because it was closed, and a doctor and a nurse went there every day to attend to no one. There was still a cleaning service when this place was not occupied, so it was abandoned, but ultimately they didn't want to lose the financial side of these deals.

For example, in Nouadhibou, they have agreements with the European Union and they had to reach a limit of people detained in the centre, because if they didn't, they wouldn't receive any money. We even read articles where they would detain people who were not migrants, just to reach these quotas and keep receiving that aid.

They continued these detainments until the CIE became useless, because the route became impossible. The agreements on cooperation from Senegal meant that the migrants could not leave, and they went further and further down from Gambia, and their boats, in the end, because of the currents, ended up in Barbados. The route became very deadly, in fact it's the most deadly route of them all, so these centres fell into disuse. 

Now, as of 2019 or 2022, they have been reoccupied and with the same numbers as when they were set up in 2008; almost 33,000 migrants are entering through this route right now and the CIEs have reopened. These places where we did our project are now active again.

Meriem: Migrants, in many ways, are seen as trespassers, doing something that we're not supposed to be doing. Which then also brings us to the exhibition, and the focus of this whole exhibition, which is trespassing. How is your work here? How does it cover the theme of trespassing?

Patricia: I think this work makes us realise how much wisdom or knowledge there is behind survival, about wanting to risk your own life to find a better way of life, any way of life, because you can no longer live in the country where you're from -  you have to flee and that is irremediable. This is a problem uniquely faced by people who want, or need, to migrate, so the solution to this problem is also a learning process, and it is such a serious problem that only those who have faced it already have the knowledge of how to solve it. 

That's why in many cases on the walls we've found telephone numbers, email addresses, advice and recommendations that they leave for each other, they leave it on the walls so that the next person who comes can find that advice that has worked for the previous person. For example, if they ask you what country you are from, don't tell them you are from Gambia or Cameroon, or they will send you back to Morocco. So yes, there are many strategies that they have learnt from having been on this journey that is just so hard. 

Meriem: Does Spain help the situation or not? Maria: Spain doesn't help and this doesn't really change with governments. Now, we have a government from which we expected more commitment to migration policies but it's just been almost worse than the previous one. For example, on the border fences in July 2022 a lot of people died, because every time they make agreements there are issues. Let's say, Spain has an agreement with Morocco. So when they agree, Morocco puts a lot more pressure on holding back migrants from crossing but when this relationship between countries is rocky, they open borders to gain leverage. It's all depending on their interests and intentions.

Help? I haven't seen any. In fact, there is a CIE now being built costing 3 million euros to house more migrants when maybe the help should be more at the root cause. I would love to see it, but ..no, it's getting more and more difficult, the borders are more and more controlled, Spain has more and more agreements with Mali which is at war, and also now there is a document called the passport in transit, even for refugees, and all this bureaucracy, it's  just getting more and more difficult. 

Patricia: There are no laws to really improve the situation. For sure there are a lot of good intentions alongside other European countries, like for example signing agreements that do not materialise into real help, but mainly migration is still seen as a problem. But what if it were seen not as a problem but as a humanitarian need? Then laws could be different. 

There is a lot of aid for refugees once they have arrived in Spain but the issue is that they cannot reach Spain - because before reaching Spain they must pass through what we call a third party country which then acts like a prison. So it's almost impossible to get to Spain.

Maria: In Mauritania, we saw that the economy is dependent on fishing. What's happening is that European countries, once they have already depleted European waters, have gone to Africa to fish, so on these coasts in Mauritania and all surrounding areas, we saw Japanese and European companies. Lots of them. We were struck by the fact that in the middle of the desert, there are these huge constructions which they are using for fish farming in African waters in exchange for  cooperation agreements. The traditional and artisanal fishing in Senegal, Gambia and Mauritania, is coming to an end because these huge farms and industrial barges are taking so many tons of fish that there is hardly anything left for locals to continue with the way of fishing they had before.

So many of the cayucos boats in which the migrants arrive to other countries are from owners who, without the ability to fish, are being forced to sell to the mafias. In the port of Nouadhibou, it was like a horizon of canoes! They stretch out endlessly, almost infinitely. All of them, just lined up in the port. 

Meriem: As a last question, to close this, I wanted to ask how working on this series, A Tous Le Clandestins, has changed your understanding of migration, borders and exclusion? And what is the message you're hoping to bring with this series?

Patricia: Above all, we wanted to point towards the problem, to an issue that we have created in Western society and in Europe, to raise awareness, to see the people who are behind all these journeys and all these deaths. We wanted to pay homage to the people who left all these testimonies on the walls, who passed through there and who were arrested, and we never got to know anymore about them. They are individuals who have been forgotten by the rest of society. Many years have passed since we did this project but we can see that nothing's changed, it's gotten even worse.

Above all else, it's a tribute, that's why it's called A Tous Le Clandestins: dedicated to all the clandestines, to their memory. The title is one of the phrases very often repeated on the walls. They left that phrase written on the walls! And they were proud of being underground, of being clandestine. You can see that in their testimonies. They're proud. It’s a solidarity that exists in all these people who are united by this serious problem. It's something we should learn. Solidarity that the whole of Europe does not offer. 

Maria: Something we haven't talked about is the difference in themes of the messages, from one shore to the other. In Mauritania, for example, all the writings we found in the CIE were full of anger towards their own country, because there were texts saying stuff like, "the number one enemy of Africa are the Africans themselves". They felt betrayed because they were being detained by their own countrymen. But the writings changed once in Spain.

They became smaller because everyone was confined to bunk beds. When we removed the bunks and started to wash the walls, we saw a perfect outline of the rectangle of space that each person occupied - and this space is really tiny - and the walls were full of  writings, notes and scribbles, messages written in pen, smaller and cramped, but full of joy.

Joyful because they arrived, and they are alive. But seeing these really made us think: wow, of course you're happy you are here, but now you're in prison. Your journey ended in a prison.

Despite that, the messages were happy and so hopeful. A lot of them would repeat, over and over: “in 60 days, I will be free. In 60 days I will be free.”

After 60 days in detention, a choice is made: either you are extradited back to Africa, or the doors of the detention camp are opened, and the journey of your new life continues.