Doug Aitken Creates Spellbinding Mirage House In Desert

Renowned visual artist Doug Aitken has created a dazzling invisible house perched on the outskirts of Palm Springs as part of the inaugural Desert X art festival.

Aitken’s site-specific installation is one of 16 artworks installed across the barren desert landscape of California’s Coachella Valley. Informed by traditional ranches in the American West, ‘Mirage’ is a house made of mirrors that dissolves into the surrounding environment it reflects, appearing familiar from afar, yet peculiar up close due to its unconventional choice of materials. The piece has been created as part of a larger commentary on “the history of the western expansion.”

As Aitken says, “Mirage distills the recognisable and repetitious suburban home into the essence of its lines, reflecting and disappearing into the vast western landscape”. He added, “It’s almost as if this work is meant to be invisible. It’s created to appear and disappear and to become a vortex of the landscape around it”, with its mirrored surfaces absorbing and distorting the world outside like a life-sized kaleidoscope.

Desert X runs along a 45 mile strip of land and other artists that are taking part in the festival include LA-based artist Jennifer Bolande, art giant Richard Prince and Bahamian artist Tavares Strachan.

Desert X runs from February 25-April 30, with ‘Mirage’ set to take up residency until 31 October 2017.