Hostile Terrain 94

BRINGING HOSTILE TERRAIN 94 TO THE
STANFORD COMMUNITY
KOJI LAU-OZAWA
When I first saw the Hostile Terrain 94 installation in a photograph, I did
not understand what I was looking at. As one of my advisors outlined
the meaning behind the mass of orange and tan tags, it dawned on me
that each of those tags represented a life lost as the result of US border
policies. Each signified a life that was filled with triumphs and sorrows,
passions and fears, hopes and disappointments. I was overwhelmed by
the immensity of the loss.
Hostile Terrain 94 is a production of the Undocumented Migration Project
(UMP). Led by scholar Jason De León, the UMP is an anthropological
study of clandestine movement between Latin America and the
United States. Drawing on a range of disciplines, from archaeology and
forensic sciences to ethnography and visual anthropology, the UMP
strives not only to understand the processes of migration and the lives
of migrants but also to educate the public through multiple mediums.
Earlier exhibitions by the UMP—such as State of Exception / Estado
de Excepción, which featured hundreds of backpacks and ephemera
left behind by migrants crossing the US-Mexico border—have been
presented across the United States. While powerful, such traveling
exhibitions are cost prohibitive for many institutions to host, limiting the
public’s exposure to these visual statements.
In response to this challenge, the UMP team developed Hostile Terrain
94 as a multimedia exhibit that relies on community participation
for completion and is much more affordable to host. It consists of
more than 3,200 toe tags hung across a wall map of the US-Mexico
border; each tag is pinned to the map according to coordinates for
Toe tags, Hostile Terrain 94, 2020
4 HOSTILE TERRAIN 94 | ANDERSON COLLECTION AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY HOSTILE TERRAIN 94 | ANDERSON COLLECTION AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY 5