Contact: Allison Matthews

STARKVILLE, Miss.—A participatory art project sponsored and organized by the Undocumented Migration Project, a non-profit research-art-education-media collective, is open through Oct. 15 at Mississippi State, with an opening reception Sept. 16 at 5 p.m.

Hostile Terrain 94 is on display at the Union Art Gallery on the second floor of MSU’s Colvard Student Union. The exhibition is directed by University of California, Los Angeles anthropologist Jason De León and 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.

The installation is organized by MSU’s Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures during Hispanic Heritage Month. Co-sponsors are the university’s Holmes Cultural Diversity Center and the Department of Art.

A panel discussion will be held Sept. 29 at 4 p.m. in the Union’s Fowlkes Auditorium, and De León will give a keynote lecture on Oct. 1 at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium at Old Main Academic Center.

For more information, visit www.undocumentedmigrationproject.org/hostileterrain94. For questions, email Associate Professor David Hoffman at dmh272@msstate.edu or Assistant Professor Anna Osterholtz at aosterholtz@anthro.msstate.edu.

The Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures is online at www.amec.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.