INTRO

Hostile Terrain 94 is a global participative exhibition project. It features a wall map of the U.S.-Mexico border in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and ca. 3,200 toe tags that represent those migrants who died trying to cross the border via the desert between 2000 and 2020. Pinned to the wall map, the geo-located tags show the geographic location where the human remains were found.

​When the Hostile Terrain 94 exhibition opened and the first visitors made their way to the inner courtyard of the Bible Museum, they found that the large wall map of the installation was still empty. Hostile Terrain 94 is an artwork in the making. The toe tags are pinned to it little by little, filling the emptiness on the map gradually. The initial emptiness of the map mirrors the invisibility which characterizes so many refugees' and migrants' fates. The toe tags, mounted to the wall map, are meant to make these fates more visible.