Bringing the Border to Columbus Virtual Symposium
April 12-16, 2021
Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94) will engage Ohio State students and scholars, community organizers and activists in discussions about the role of art in creating awareness of border violence. The interactive exhibition is part of Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94), a participatory art project organized by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP). HT94 is composed of 3,200 toe tags that represent migrants who have died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. While visiting Hostile Terrain, visitors are encouraged to complete these toe tags at Hopkins Hall Gallery as they learn more about the violence at the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
While current circumstances prevent us from gathering to assemble the installation in-person, we will proceed with a virtual symposium to bring awareness to this impactful issue happening on the border. Our intention is for the installation to be presented at The Ohio State University sometime in 2022, to continue to engage students as well as local community organizers and activists in discussions about the role of art and artists in creating awareness of border violence.
Hostile Terrain 94 is presented in partnership with Hybrid Arts Lab, a multi-venue learning lab that experiments with how art is imagined, made, viewed and understood within physical and digital spaces.
Installation Credits
- Concept of the HT94 installation: Jason De León (Professor of Anthropology and Chicana, Chicano, and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and director of the Undocumented Migration Project)
- Curator: Luke Stettner (Lecturer, Department of Art, The Ohio State University)
- Assistant Curator: Bryan Ortiz (Graduate Student, Department of Art, The Ohio State University)
Accessibility
If you have questions or require an accommodation, such as live captioning or interpretation, to participate in these events, email Event Coordinator Melissa Rodriguez (rodriguez.796@osu.edu). Requests made two weeks before an individual event date will generally allow us to coordinate seamless access, but the university will make every attempt to meet requests made after this date.
Acknowledgments
This event was funded by a grant from the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery theme. It is co-sponsored by the Latina/o Studies Program, Center for Folklore Studies, Urban Arts Space, Department of Sociology and Institute for Population Research.
Pre-registration
**Pre-registration is required as part of COVID guidelines. Before your visit, please review the safety guidelines in place at the Hopkins Hall Gallery.
