LOS ANGELES - Mysterious metallic mirrors, stacks of imported marble boulders and a 3D-printed mud hut appeared in the California desert as the biennial outdoor art festival Desert X returned.
The free event, which drew 600,000 visitors in its last edition, sends contemporary art-lovers on a treasure hunt to find works scattered across the Coachella Valley.
French-American artist Sarah Meyohas used intricately curved metallic mirrors to reflect and refract the bright desert sunlight, beaming the words "Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams" across the sides of a meandering 120m stucco ribbon.
Using "caustic" technology based on the way light "plays at the bottom of a swimming pool" to turn sun beams into text, the work speaks to "a world in which we are so politically divided," she told AFP.
Twenty miles across the desert, Mexican artist Jose Davila has stacked colossal 16-ton marble boulders that were quarried in the Chihuahua Desert of his nearby home country.
The work is titled "The act of being together."
Arranged to invoke megalithic structures like Britain's Stonehenge, the giant hewn marble lumps also speak to the "current climate of events" in which tariffs have recently been hiked at the US-Mexican border.
The show brings artists from around the world to make installations specific to the North American desert landscape, sourcing and fabricating many materials from Mexico.
Other installations include Ronald Rael's "Adobe Oasis," which used an enormous robotic arm to 3D-print walls made of clay and straw, in the adobe style traditional in this region.