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A-Z West consists of 80 acres in the California high desert adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park. For over 20 years these grounds and dwellings functioned as Andrea Zittel's testing grounds for living - a place in which spaces, objects, and acts of living all intertwine into a single ongoing investigation into what it means to exist and participate in our culture today.

High Desert Test Sites hosts two public tours per month as a key source of income for A-Z West stewardship and HDTS programing. This 90-minute tour includes the grounds of A-Z West, studio and showroom, Wagon Station Encampment, and shipping container compound. It involves walking outside on unshaded dirt paths. Comfortable walking shoes, a hat, and a water bottle are highly recommended. If you have access-related questions about your visit to an HDTS site or program, contact us at info@hdts.site or 760-507-4190.

Tours are $35 per person. High desert local? Email info@hdts.site for a $10 discount code.

If you’re a LA resident displaced by the wildfires and you’re in the High Desert, you’re welcome to join the tour for free. Email info@hdts.site for discount code.

To inquire about a private or educational group tour please email info@hdts.site.

Visit and chat with HDTS Fellow, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, in the Studio at A-Z West.

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores communication practices and poetics across all species, states of living, states of consciousness, and substrates. She creates sprawling, “architecturally-scaled” installations; public installations; publications; prints; performances; performance scores; poems; video; and other forms yet to be determined. Most recently, she is a recipient of a 2023 Working Artist Fellowship; a 2022 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research; a 2022 Creative Capital Award; a 2022 Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants - Experiments with Google; and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions include REDCAT (2024), KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and Kunstverein Hannover (2022). Rasheed is the author of five artists' books: in the coherence, we weep (KW Institute, 2023); i am not done yet (Mousse Publishing, 2022); An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions, 2019); No New Theories (Printed Matter, 2019); and the digital publication Scoring the Stacks (Brooklyn Public Library, 2021). She is on faculty at the Yale School of Art, MFA Sculpture Department, and an instructor at the School for Poetic Computation. Rasheed founded Orange Tangent Study, a consulting business that provides artist microgrants and supports individuals and institutions in designing expansive and liberatory learning experiences

We are excited to announce Kameelah Janan Rasheed as our 2024 High Desert Test Sites Fellow. We could not be more enthused about her presence and the dialogue she will foster with the land, its inhabitants, and those who encounter her work.

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores communication practices and poetics across all species, states of living, states of consciousness, and substrates. She creates sprawling, “architecturally-scaled” installations; public installations; publications; prints; performances; performance scores; poems; video; and other forms yet to be determined. Most recently, she is a recipient of a 2023 Working Artist Fellowship; a 2022 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research; a 2022 Creative Capital Award; a 2022 Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants - Experiments with Google; and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions include REDCAT (2024), KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and Kunstverein Hannover (2022). Rasheed is the author of five artists' books: in the coherence, we weep (KW Institute, 2023); i am not done yet (Mousse Publishing, 2022); An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions, 2019); No New Theories (Printed Matter, 2019); and the digital publication Scoring the Stacks (Brooklyn Public Library, 2021). She is on faculty at the Yale School of Art, MFA Sculpture Department, and an instructor at the School for Poetic Computation. Rasheed founded Orange Tangent Study, a consulting business that provides artist microgrants and supports individuals and institutions in designing expansive and liberatory learning experiences.

The HDTS Fellowship is an annual residency which provides established artists the opportunity to spend extended time at A-Z West while working to realize an artwork or program that engages and enriches our High Desert community. The HDTS Fellowship Program is funded in part by generous support from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and Wilhelm Family Foundation.

Visit and chat with HDTS Fellow, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, in the Studio at A-Z West.

Stay for her artist talk at 5pm.

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores communication practices and poetics across all species, states of living, states of consciousness, and substrates. She creates sprawling, “architecturally-scaled” installations; public installations; publications; prints; performances; performance scores; poems; video; and other forms yet to be determined. Most recently, she is a recipient of a 2023 Working Artist Fellowship; a 2022 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research; a 2022 Creative Capital Award; a 2022 Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants - Experiments with Google; and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions include REDCAT (2024), KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and Kunstverein Hannover (2022). Rasheed is the author of five artists' books: in the coherence, we weep (KW Institute, 2023); i am not done yet (Mousse Publishing, 2022); An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions, 2019); No New Theories (Printed Matter, 2019); and the digital publication Scoring the Stacks (Brooklyn Public Library, 2021). She is on faculty at the Yale School of Art, MFA Sculpture Department, and an instructor at the School for Poetic Computation. Rasheed founded Orange Tangent Study, a consulting business that provides artist microgrants and supports individuals and institutions in designing expansive and liberatory learning experiences.

HDTS welcomes you to join us to celebrate another year of supporting artists here at HDTS. Artst wares, small bites and new West Work releases will be available.