Witnessing and Remembering: Community Creation of the Hostile Terrain 94 Exhibition (Undocumented Migration Project)

This workshop is in preparation for the Hostile Terrain 94 Exhibition (https://www.undocumentedmigrationproject.org/hostileterrain94), which illustrates the risks to life borne by clandestine border crossers walking through the Sonora Desert in Arizona.

In this session, participants will be invited to fill in the toe tags of people who perished in the desert. The toe tags include their names, home town, the location where their remains were discovered, and the cause of death.

Sign-language interpretation or real-time captioning is available upon request, subject to availability. Please make your request here: https://myaccess.rit.edu.

Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94) is a participatory project organized by the Undocumented Migration Project (https://www.undocumentedmigrationproject.org), a non-profit research-art-education-media collective, directed by MacArthur Fellow and UCLA anthropologist Jason De León (https://www.jasonpatrickdeleon.com). The exhibition comprises more than 3,200 handwritten toe tags that represent migrants who died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. Each toe tag lists the personal information of one such individual: one-by-one, these tags will be geolocated on a wall map of the desert showing the exact locations where remains were found.

Between October 25 and December 5, 2021, RIT will host one part of a global pop-up installation that will take place simultaneously at a large number of institutions, both nationally and globally in 2021 and 2022. With volunteers, we will set up the map and pin up the toe tags in an exhibit space (in the hallway outside University Gallery, 2765 Booth Hall). The location will enable us to adhere to all social distancing guidelines while also providing ample space for quiet engagement, reflection, and conversation about the humanitarian crisis at our southern border.

This library infoguide (https://infoguides.rit.edu/c.php?g=1167470) includes more information about the Hostile Terrain 94 exhibition, related events at RIT, undocumented migration, and book and film resources.