Migrantas

Migrantas is an artist collective based in Berlin, Germany, founded in 2004 around the social and artistic exploration of migration, identity, belonging, and intercultural communication. Rather than operating as a conventional commercial brand, Migrantas functions as a participatory cultural initiative whose identity is closely associated with a distinctive visual language of pictograms. The collective develops these images through workshops with migrant communities and then brings them into public space through exhibitions and urban actions. The collective’s method begins with conversation, drawing, and exchange. Workshop participants—often migrant women and members of migrant associations—are encouraged to describe or sketch everyday experiences, emotions, conflicts, and observations connected with living in a foreign cultural environment. Migrantas members subsequently translate themes from these sketches into simplified pictograms. The resulting images are intended to be widely legible across language barriers while retaining the social, cultural, economic, and political meanings of migration. Migrantas deliberately reworks the conventional function of public pictograms. Standardized symbols are commonly used for navigation, advertising, transport, and public information. Migrantas uses a related visual format not to direct behavior or sell products, but to express personal experiences and make them publicly recognizable. The collective argues that migrants’ perspectives often receive limited visibility in mainstream media and that placing their images in shared urban environments can create a direct form of public testimony. Its public interventions have included posters, billboards, and advertising spaces on public transport. These urban actions are accompanied by exhibitions that present both finished pictograms and the drawings or workshop material from which they developed. This combination emphasizes the collaborative process and gives participants recognition as contributors to the work rather than treating them only as subjects. Migrantas has presented projects in several German cities and in other European locations, with documented activities extending to Buenos Aires and Seville. The collective is organized non-hierarchically and is composed of migrants. Its practice connects participatory art, civic engagement, visual communication, and migration education. Projects such as Proyecto Ausländer, Integration – Lauter Bilder von Migrantinnen, Bundesmigrantinnen, and Sevilla Plural examined migration through different local communities and exhibition contexts. The work has also appeared in publications concerning migration, mobility, gender, multiculturalism, and everyday life. In 2011, Migrantas received the German Award for Integration and Tolerance from the Initiative Hauptstadt Berlin; the award was presented by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This recognition reflected the collective’s contribution to public discussion of integration and pluralism. Migrantas is best understood as a socially engaged art brand and cultural platform rather than a product company. Its principal offerings are workshops, pictogram development, public-space interventions, exhibitions, and related publications. The available reference material does not establish a current legal structure, commercial ownership, or continuing operational status.

Migrantas formed in Berlin in 2004 as a collective of migrant artists and collaborators interested in translating the everyday realities of migration into a public visual language. Its work developed against the background of debates about immigration, integration, identity, and cultural diversity in Germany and Europe. The collective’s core proposition was that pictograms—images normally used for transport, public notices, commercial communication, and wayfinding—could be repurposed to communicate personal and political experiences that are difficult to express through ordinary public discourse. The collective’s practice is participatory. Migrantas organizes workshops with migrant groups, associations, and communities, with a particular emphasis on women’s experiences. Participants discuss their lives and produce drawings reflecting feelings, memories, social encounters, obstacles, and forms of belonging associated with migration. Migrantas then develops selected themes from these sketches into simplified pictograms. The process combines community testimony with the collective’s graphic interpretation, while maintaining a connection between the final public image and the participant experience from which it emerged. The resulting pictograms are designed to be understandable beyond a single written language. Their visual simplicity recalls internationally familiar public symbols, but their subject matter differs from ordinary signage. Instead of indicating a facility or prescribing an action, the images address social exclusion, cultural negotiation, family life, movement, identity, and the emotional dimensions of settling in another society. Migrantas presents this visual system as a way to make migrants’ experiences visible to audiences who may have little direct access to those perspectives through mainstream media. The collective has used two complementary forms of presentation. In urban actions, pictograms are placed in public environments through posters, billboards, and advertising spaces on public transport. These interventions move migration-related stories into ordinary daily routes and make them visible outside museums or specialist cultural institutions. In exhibitions, Migrantas displays finished pictograms alongside workshop drawings and documentation, allowing viewers to see both the public result and the collaborative process behind it. This format also recognizes participants as contributors and authors of social knowledge. Migrantas’s documented projects began in 2004 with Proyecto Ausländer, presented in Berlin and Buenos Aires. Subsequent activities included Integration – Lauter Bilder von Migrantinnen in Berlin in 2005; Interkulturelle Werkstatt and Bilder bewegen in Berlin in 2006; Bundesmigrantinnen in Hamburg in 2007 and Cologne in 2008; and presentations at the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt in 2009. In 2010, the collective participated in Sevilla Plural, Bild der Migration im öffentlichen Raum in Spain, and exhibited at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen. Its 2011 activities included Europa-Kind + Europa-Schule – Bilder der Vielfalt in Berlin. The collective’s approach also circulated through books and other publications. Its work was connected with discussions of migration and mobility in Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender, edited by Seyla Benhabib and Judith Resnik. It contributed visual material to Migration und Alltag. Unsere Wirklichkeit ist anders and to Susanne Stemmler’s Multikultur 2.0, which addressed Germany as an immigration country. Migrantas was also included in the design and branding reference volume Brand Identity Now!, reflecting the distinctive and recognizable character of its pictographic identity. In 2011, Migrantas received the German Award for Integration and Tolerance from the Initiative Hauptstadt Berlin. Angela Merkel presented the award on behalf of the initiative. The distinction marked a significant point in the collective’s public recognition, although Migrantas remained a non-hierarchical artistic and civic initiative rather than becoming a conventional company. The available sources do not document a formal founder, corporate parent, commercial owner, financial results, or later organizational changes. They establish Migrantas primarily as a Berlin-based artist collective whose enduring contribution is the use of participatory visual communication to connect migrant testimony with public art.

• 2011

  Europa-Kind + Europa-Schule

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  The collective documents a Berlin project concerning diversity, children, schools, and a European context.

• 2011

  German Award for Integration and Tolerance

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  Migrantas receives the German Award for Integration and Tolerance from the Initiative Hauptstadt Berlin; Angela Merkel presents the award.

• 2010

  Sevilla Plural

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  The collective participates in Sevilla Plural, a Spanish project examining migration in public space.

• 2010

  Zeppelin Museum presentation

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  Migrantas presents its work at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen.

• 2009

  Presentation at the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  Migrantas’s work is presented at the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.

• 2008

  Bundesmigrantinnen in Cologne

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  Bundesmigrantinnen continues with a presentation in Cologne.

• 2007

  Bundesmigrantinnen in Hamburg

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  The Bundesmigrantinnen project is presented in Hamburg.

• 2006

  Intercultural workshop and Bilder bewegen

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  Migrantas records two Berlin-based activities that extend its intercultural workshop and public-visual practices.

• 2005

  Integration – Lauter Bilder von Migrantinnen

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  The collective develops a Berlin project focused on migrant women’s experiences and their representation through images.

• 2004

  Migrantas is formed

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  A migrant artist collective is established in Berlin to explore migration, identity, and intercultural communication through participatory visual art.

• 2004

  Proyecto Ausländer

  [1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  Migrantas presents Proyecto Ausländer in Berlin and Buenos Aires, establishing its workshop-based and public-art approach.

A socially engaged art collective using participatory workshops and universally legible pictograms to amplify migrants’ voices and encourage intercultural dialogue in public space.

• Community art and intercultural communication · 2004

  Participatory pictogram workshops

  Migrantas workshops invite migrant participants, frequently women and community associations, to discuss and draw their experiences of migration. The collective uses the resulting material as the conceptual basis for pictograms, combining participant testimony with graphic development. The workshops are the central production process behind the collective’s public interventions and exhibitions.

• Visual identity and public art · 2004

  Migration pictograms

  These simplified images adapt the broad visual logic of internationally recognizable public symbols to themes of migration, identity, cultural difference, social conditions, and belonging. Unlike ordinary signs, they are intended to communicate personal and political experiences rather than provide directions or commercial information.

• Public-space intervention · 2004

  Urban actions

  Migrantas places its pictograms in everyday urban environments through posters, billboards, and advertising spaces on public transport. These actions bring migrant perspectives into streets and transit systems, reaching audiences beyond galleries and enabling participants’ experiences to receive public recognition.

• Exhibition and education · 2004

  Exhibitions and workshop archives

  Migrantas exhibitions commonly show completed pictograms together with sketches and documentation from the workshops that produced them. This presentation makes the collaborative process visible and positions the work as both contemporary art and a record of community experience.

• 2011Europa-Kind + Europa-Schule – Bilder der Vielfalt

  Berlin

  A Berlin project connecting children, schools, diversity, and European identity through images of plural social experience.

  Outcome. Added an educational and child-focused dimension to the collective’s documented project portfolio.

  Source
• 2010Sevilla Plural, Bild der Migration im öffentlichen Raum

  Seville, Spain

  A Spanish public-space project addressing migration through visual interventions and the collective’s pictogram-based approach.

  Outcome. Extended Migrantas’s documented public-art activity beyond Germany.

  Source
• 2007Bundesmigrantinnen

  Hamburg · Cologne

  A project presented first in Hamburg and later in Cologne, examining migrant women’s perspectives through Migrantas’s visual and participatory methods.

  Outcome. Expanded the project’s presentation across German cities.

  Source
• 2005Integration – Lauter Bilder von Migrantinnen

  Berlin

  A Berlin project centered on migrant women and the representation of their experiences through a series of collaboratively informed images.

  Outcome. Documented as a major early project in Migrantas’s work with women and migration narratives.

  Source
• 2004Proyecto Ausländer

  Berlin · Buenos Aires

  An early Migrantas project using the collective’s participatory and pictographic approach to address the experience of being perceived as foreign and to connect migrant stories with public presentation.

  Outcome. Established the model of combining migrant workshops, pictogram development, and public or exhibition-based presentation.

  Source

• 2004

  Adopt a participatory pictogram modelStrategy

  Background

  Migrantas sought a way to communicate migrant experiences across language barriers while ensuring that the experiences originated in migrant communities themselves.

  Action taken

  The collective combined community workshops, participant sketches, graphic interpretation, and public-space interventions using posters, billboards, and transport advertising.

  Aftermath

  This became the defining working method across the collective’s documented projects and exhibitions.

  Source

• 2011

  Migrantas receives the German Award for Integration and Tolerance[1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  Other

  Migrantas was recognized by the Initiative Hauptstadt Berlin with the German Award for Integration and Tolerance. The award was presented by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and acknowledged the collective’s work on migration, visibility, and intercultural understanding.

• 2011

  Migrantas presents Europa-Kind and Europa-Schule in Berlin[1]Migrantasen.wikipedia.org

  Campaign

  The collective’s documented 2011 Berlin program, Europa-Kind + Europa-Schule, used Migrantas’s visual approach to address diversity and migration in an educational and European context.

1. 1Migrantasen.wikipedia.org
2. 2Migrantas official websitemigrantas.org