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Hostile Terrain 94 at Middlebury College

Center Gallery

McCullough Student Center

Exhibition Spring 2022

Global pop-up art installation on migrant death

Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94) is a participatory art project sponsored and organized by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), a non-profit research-art-education-media collective, directed by anthropologist Jason De León. The exhibition is composed of over 3,200 handwritten toe tags that represent migrants who have died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. These tags are geolocated on a wall map of the desert showing the exact locations where remains were found. This installation will simultaneously take place at a large number of institutions, both nationally and globally in 2021 throughout 2022.

https://www.undocumentedmigrationproject.org/hostileterrain94

If you would like block out a time for your organization, class, or group to visit the installation and get a “tour,” please contact Rachael Joo rjoo@middlebury.edu.

Colibrí Center on Tuesday, April 12 at 4:30 p.m. in Library 105. Please note the new time. 

You are invited to join us in supporting the work of the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, an organization based in Tuscon, Arizona that works to help families locate family members who disappeared during their migration into the United States. 

Perla Torres, Family Network Director from Colibrí will be joining us to talk about the mission of Colibrí and to discuss how they support families searching for loved ones. We are especially honored to have Angelica share her story with us. Angelica is working with Colibrí to find her brother Daniel Perez Romero. Both Perla and Angelica will be joining us via zoom. 

The Undocumented Migration Project, sponsors of the global pop-up installation Hostile Terrain 94, works closely with the Colibri Center for Human Rights, and we are very grateful to be able to feature the work they do. If you have not yet visited the Hostile Terrain Installation in Center Gallery in McCullough between Wilson Hall and the Grille, please do so before it is decommissioned by April 30. 

The Tuesday April 12th event is sponsored by the Academic Enrichment Fund, CCE, American Studies, and Religion. 

This event will be largely in Spanish with English translation on the zoom cc. We respectfully require masks for attendance at this event.  

Colibrí Center – Colibrí Center for Human RightsThe Colibrí Center for Human Rights helps identify the remains of migrants found along the southern Arizona border and provides support to families searching for loved ones no matter where they are located.colibricenter.org

In Fall of 2021, the installation took place as part of the Clifford Symposium and in conjunction with the exhibition on Protest Art at the Middlebury College Museum of Art.

This Spring 2022, the installation was completed.

March 29, 2022 is a screening and conversation of Border South/Frontera Sur at 7:30 p.m. in Wilson Hall

April 12, 2022, A virtual visit with Colibri families searching for their loved ones. Library 105.

For questions about the pop-up installation or Hostile Terrain 94 at Middlebury, please contact Rachael Joo rjoo@middlebury

Middlebury College sits on land which has served as a site of meeting and exchange among indigenous peoples since time immemorial. The Western Abenaki are the traditional caretakers of these Vermont lands and waters, which they call Ndakinna, or “homeland.” We remember their connection to this region and the hardships they continue to endure. We give thanks for the opportunity to share in the bounty of this place and to protect it.