Ballroom Marfa Curator Laura Copelin at Frieze …

From seminal Land Art projects like Michael Heizer’s Double Negative and James Turrell’s Roden Crater; to the proliferation of artists’ projects in Marfa, Texas; to Jananne Al-Ani’s films of remote landscapes of the Middle East that have been scarred by war, to Ben Rivers’s most recent project, set in the Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona, the unique and sometimes bizarre landscapes of the desert have served as fertile ground for artists, writers and filmmakers alike. What are the utopian and dystopian qualities of the desert that draw artists over generations? In this panel discussion, curator and writer Shumon Basar discusses the ‘desert imaginary’ with artist Jananne Al-Ani, Ballroom Marfa curator Laura Copelin,