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Toe-tag art honors over 4,000 migrants who died crossing border into Arizona

Hostile Terrain 94 is a wall map composed of toe tags placed where every migrant perished in the Sonoran desert
Toe-Tag Art Honors Migrants Who Died Crossing AZ-Sonora Border
Posted at 9:50 AM, Nov 18, 2022
and last updated 2022-11-18 11:50:56-05

Hostile Terrain 94 is an art installation hosted at Galeria Mitotera for the month of November honoring and remembering the more than 4,000 migrants who have died while crossing the Arizona-Sonora border.

Community members in Tucson were invited to contribute to the wall map featuring geolocated toe-tags placed at the location where every migrant died attempting to cross the Arizona-Sonora desert from the mid 1990's to 2019.

Tucson community members come together to contribute to Toe-Tag Art honoring migrants who perished
Tucson community members come together to contribute to Hostile Terrain 94, toe-tag art honoring migrants who perished.

This is the first time Hostile Terrain 94 has been exhibited in Tucson.

“The most powerful participatory element of this project involves the time and effort required of volunteers to meticulously fill out the thousands of individual toe tag cards that include the name, age, sex, cause of death, condition of body, and location of recovery for each person. We hope that community members who will see the visually impactful map in our shop or online will take a moment to reflect on the realities and death of migrants,” said Galeria Mitotera co-owner Melissa Brown-Dominguez.

Galeria Mitotera bills itself as 'a space to celebrate Chicanx culture, uplift artists of color in the community and create a safe space for community members and artists to inspire one another through art and togetherness.'

Hostile Terrain 94 is a collaboration between Galeria Mitotera , Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry, and the Colibri Center for Human Rights.

The exhibit will be available for viewing through November at Galerie Mitotera on 4th Avenue.

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