As part of the curatorial team for Desert X—the edition co-curated by Walker Art Center's Amanda Hunt and Matthew Schum—Tamaddon secured Missoni as sponsor for Eric N. Mack's largest publicly commissioned artwork to date, enabling the realization of the artist's most ambitious site-specific work to date in the California desert. Mack (b. 1987, Columbia, MD) is a painter who radically expands the conventions of the medium, using found textiles and material assemblies to construct richly layered works that exist between painting, sculpture, and installation. His practice reframes painting as an expanded field where fabric, structure, and gesture operate in constant dialogue.

For Desert X, Mack's Halter (2019) transformed a defunct gas station at the edge of the Salton Sea into a living architecture. Silks and tulles were tensioned with rope to form suspended lines in space, reanimating the structure as a site-specific intervention that blurred garment, shelter, and landscape. Widely regarded as one of the most iconic works of all Desert X editions, it became a landmark within the desert—offering visitors a space for reflection amid shifting folds of color, fabric, and light.

Tamaddon worked closely with Mack and the Missoni family and archive throughout the development of the commission, facilitating access to archival textiles from Missoni's historic archive. Mack incorporated these materials directly into the conception of the work, establishing a material dialogue between the artist's language and Missoni's textile legacy. These archival fabrics have since continued to be activated within Mack's ongoing practice, appearing across new and existing works in collaboration with galleries and institutions. Since then, Mack has presented major institutional exhibitions internationally, including at Palazzo Grassi, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Wexner Center for the Arts, among others. He lives and works in New York.