Leading institution: HEAD – Genève
Project applicant: Aida Navarro Redón
Co-project applicant: Swann Pichon, HEdS
Project team: Leonie Courbat, Claire Delhomme, Juana Miquel Ordóñez, Adina Lizeth Garcia Velazquez
Partners: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Musée international de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge (MICR)
Financing: HES-SO, Call for strategic projects Open and participatory innovation serving society
Bourgeons d'Exil is an interactive graphic novel and puzzle adventure which invites players to explore the embodied and emotional intersecting landscapes of three women navigating exile, as new life and parenthood begin to take shape. Rather than centering trauma, the project approaches maternity as a vector of resilience within migratory pathways — a space where attachment, care, responsibility, and embodied strength generate continuity amid rupture.
The narrative draws on the experiences of three women navigating exile in distinct geographical and political contexts: one crossing the Darién Gap while pregnant; another travelling from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Nakivale Camps (Uganda); and a Ukrainian mother granted refuge in Geneva. The game unfolds in three self-contained chapters aligned with key phases of migration — departure, journey, and arrival — which parallel stages of motherhood: pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period.
The project aims at co-creating a narrative and aesthetic interactive experience designed to foster compassion and encourage meaningful emotional engagement with the shared challenges of motherhood in transition.
Developed using the open-source engine Godot, the story unfolds through a hybrid comic-scrolling system that combines a continuous sequence of illustrated panels with 2D side-scrolling levels in forced progression — a mechanic that metaphorically reflects the involuntary displacement experienced by millions of women.