In Dean’s interpretation, Inferno is not a seething cauldron of sin but, like Dante’s own description of the Ninth Circle, is an icy topography, which Dean drew in negative. A jagged, inverted mountain landscape symbolizes the underworld: a vast, barren region where no one can survive. Black, icy peaks jut out below, inverting light and dark values like those of light-sensitive negatives in photography. The monumental “wall drawing” Inferno is the longest chalk drawing Tacita Dean has ever made. It was reproduced for the backdrop of Act I.