A collaboration with The School of Advanced Research (SAR) and Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA), and SITE Santa Fe presents Beyond Borders, a series of installations and events starting with Hostile Terrain 94, a participatory art project and exhibition intended to call attention to the realities of migration and border policy in our hemisphere, organized by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), and based on the work of SAR Fellow Jason de León. The physical exhibition is scheduled to debut at SITE Santa Fe in mid-July with a digital opening on July 17, 2020.

Watch the groundbreaking global debut of Beyond Borders with a digital opening of Hostile Terrain 94 here. The event is free but registration is required. RSVP here on the SAR website.

Hostile Terrain 94 was created to raise awareness of the death and suffering that occur regularly at the border between the U.S. and Mexico, and to remember those who have died, including many who remain unidentified. The exhibit is composed of ~3,200 handwritten toe tags that represent the migrants who have died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. During the COVID-19 shutdown, teams from SAR, CCA, SITE Santa Fe, and others, including students from the New Mexico School for the Arts, have been meticulously filling out the individual toe tag cards at the center of the installation. Each tag includes the name, age, sex, cause of death, condition of body, and location of recovery for each person memorialized in this project.

Following its debut at SITE Santa Fe, Hostile Terrain 94 will continue on a tour of up to 150 additional locations around the globe, including Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Seattle, Miami, Mexico City, San Pedro Sula (Honduras), San Salvador (El Salvador), and Lampedusa (Italy).

Several public programs will accompany the exhibit to facilitate deeper local community conversations about the issues and to offer additional perspective from De León and other leading anthropologists and social scientists who work with and study immigrant communities.

For more information, please visit the Beyond Borders website.