About
Hostile Terrain 94 | Undocumented Migration Project
August 24 - November 20 | Art Alley
Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94) is a global call to action hosted by the Undocumented Migration Project . It is a participatory art exhibition occurring in nearly 150 cities around the globe. The HUB-Robeson Galleries hosted this powerful exhibition in our open lounge gallery space, Art Alley, located in the HUB-Robeson Center Student Union building.
Aiming to bear witness to and memorialize the thousands of lives claimed by the U.S./Mexico Border since the 1990s, the exhibition invites collaborators, citizens, and community members alike to write the identifying information known about these migrants and map where their lives were lost. HT94 raises awareness about the human consequences of policies such as “Prevention Through Deterrence” that went into effect in 1994.
Responses and Engagement
This site is a repository of the engagement with Hostile Terrain 94 at Penn State. We thank all who participated and collaborated with this project.
Student participants shared their experience in this documentary created by students in Introduction to Public Humanities taught by Elizabeth Gray and Vertna West.
The student-led wayfinding experience hosted from Nov 9 through Nov 20, invited guests to walk through stations in the HUB and link to augmented reality experiences and videos providing deeper insights to migrants lives and families impacted. For your own wayfinding experience, the QR codes can be found below.
Through partnering with the Public Writing Initiative, Professor Layli Miron's CMLIT 107 students described and reflected on their experience participating in Hostile Terrain 94.
A common reassurance we heard in June was “we see you.” We all saw George Floyd when it was deemed socially unacceptable to look away, but we did not see Breonna Taylor. The justice system still refuses to see her. “Skeletal Remains” is unseen, only by the coroner who exhumed him and those of us who wrote his body condition on a tag. - Sarah Felter
The song 'Huida de la Mariposa' was composed and performed by Thomas Morelli in response to his experience with Hostile Terrain 94.
My first tag to fill had nothing to offer for a name; a combination of a lack of identification and the fact that the body had been reduced to skeletal remains meant that he could not be identified. All they could identify was that the body was male. I was struck with how that piece of information was so small as to not be considered information at all, especially for a mourning family in a Latin American country. - Thomas Morelli
Participants were invited to leave a message or drawing on the back of their toe tags. This was a way for them to reflect and further engage with the project.
Press
Photos by: Ashleigh Longtine