In a gallery at the back of UCSB’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum, four folding worktables face a large map dotted with location markers and hung with clusters of yellow and orange tags. More tags sit in stacks on each of the tables, along with manila envelopes and pages of printouts from a database. Opposite the map, on the two walls that flank the entrance to the room, dozens of stained and tattered T-shirts form a haphazard collage. On one side of the space, there’s a shelf displaying similarly distressed items, things like torn canvas shoes and a waterlogged diary; on the other, there’s a video monitor displaying drone footage of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. The exhibition is called Hostile Terrain 94, and it is one of more than 150 such stations set up around the world this year by a team led by UCLA professor of anthropology and 2017 MacArthur Award recipient Jason De León.
by Charles Donelan | January 30, 2020