Art exhibit shines light on loss of migrant lives

“Hostile Terrain 94,” an exhibit memorializing the lives of migrants who have died trying to cross the Mexico-United States border, premieres today and continues through Nov. 12 at the Rusteberg Art Gallery on the Brownsville campus. The exhibit is also featured at the UTRGV library on the Edinburg campus, which premiered Sept. 15 and runs through Nov. 19.

Undocumented Migration Project is a nonprofit collective with a mission to raise awareness about migrants who have lost their lives

trying to cross the border. UMP hosted around 150 exhibits in 2020, according to its website.

Sarah Rowe, an assistant professor at UTRGV in the Sociology and Anthropology Department who helped set up the exhibit along with other faculty members, explains the premise of the exhibit and why it exists.

“[There is] a policy that was passed in 1994 called Prevention, which was supposed to increase Border Patrol presence in more populated areas in order to stop undocumented crossings,” Rowe said. “This pushed people into crossing along deserts with very rugged, difficult terrain even under the best circumstances. With the large span of exhibits that HT94 has produced globally, it leaves the impression that the installation has had

a major reaction from those who have gone to visit it. People have the opportunity to connect with the issue. People who have crossed also have the opportunity to write a message on the backs of the tags they fill out.”

Jason DeLeon, an archaeologist and founder of UMP, publicly stated his interest in the results of undocumented crossings and the laws that coincide with them in his book titled, “Land of Open Graves.”

UMP began when DeLeon was working in the field during an archaeology trip and found the remains of a young woman. After that, his focus shifted from what people could materially find about immigrants to their stories about crossing.

DeLeon will be doing a Q&A session via Zoom with UTRGV students and faculty at 6 p.m. Oct. 14 to discuss UMP and the exhibit.

“I hope people will have a moment to visit the exhibit and reflect,” Rowe said. “I think a lot of times, immigration policy gets polarized and it can, unfortunately, be all too easy to forget about the people that were a part of

the process. If people can start to recognize the human cost of the [Prevention] policy, they might [advocate] for a better solution to the problem.”