Jason de León, American, born 1977
State of Exception, 2019
This image is from an exhibition by Jason de León, an anthropologist who studies migration between the US and Mexico. He uses archaeology, ethnography, forensics, photography, and art to better understand this migration crisis. Much of his work focuses on the specific 1993 immigration enforcement policy of “Prevention through Deterrence” which aims to route migration through the desert rather than stop it, in the hopes that dangerous terrain and conditions will deter would-be migrants. This policy inherently assumes that migrants' lives are expendable. De León studies both the death toll of this journey, and also the belongings that get left behind in the desert. One example are ‘migrant stations,’ collections of personal belongings that have been left behind, which can be too large to analyze. Label by Savannah Singleton