Desert park

Inhotim invited Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster to develop a new site-specific project for the gardens. With Desert Park (2010), the artist proposes an outdoor environment consisting of a small collection of local prefabricated realsize concrete bus stops over a large field of desertic white sand next to the tropical forest. The structures and their assemblage compose a miniature allusion to Brasília modernist architecture, while the artificial landscape refers as much to J. G. Ballard’s novel Burning World (1964) as to the New Mexico White Sands Desert, the location in which Gonzalez-Foerster’s renown 2003 film Atomic Park was shot. The easily identifiable pieces of urban furniture appear misplaced in their new context, pointing to the artist’s recurring explorations on the notion of cultural nomadism and something she calls “the psycho-geographic” elements of a place. The field of sand, also recalling the Bahian Lagoa do Abaeté, adds to the installation’s mystical dimension.