The 5th edition of Desert X, a recurring international art exhibition featuring site-specific installations, opened at various locations throughout the Coachella Valley, California.
The exhibition, free and open to all, will remain on view through May 11, 2025.
Curated by Artistic Director Neville Wakefield and Co-Curator Kaitlin Garcia Maestas, the exhibition will activate the desert landscape through eleven installations by artists from Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East, who provide us with alternative ways of looking at a world increasingly encircled by the transformational effects of nature and humanity.
Adopting both material, architectural forms and the elusive and the immaterial to delve into ideas of temporality and nonlinear narratives of desert time, the works invite us to glean wisdom from the desert’s vast knowledge. Participating artists form a space where ancestral wisdom intertwines and collides with contemporary visions for our collective future.
Architecture, the most visible evidence of our transformative presence, is the adopted form of many of the projects – both pavilion-like and prosaic – while immateriality and elusive forms of wind and light signal the transformative effects, not just of humans, but of nature upon the landscape.
Artists include:
Sanford Biggers, b. Los Angeles, CA, USA. 1970, based in New York, NY, USA
Jose Dávila, b. Guadalajara, Mexico, 1974, based in Guadalajara, Mexico
Agnes Denes, b. Budapest, Hungary, 1931, based in New York, NY, USA
Cannupa Hanska Luger, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota, b. Standing Rock Reservation, North Dakota, USA, 1979, based in Glorieta, New Mexico, USA
Raphael Hefti, b. Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1978, based in Zurich, Switzerland Kimsooja, b. Daegu, Korea, 1957, based in Seoul, South Korea and Paris, France
Kapwani Kiwanga, b. Hamilton, Canada, 1978, based in Paris, France
Sarah Meyohas, b. New York, NY, USA, 1991, based in New York, NY, USA
Ronald Rael, b. Conejos Country, CO, USA,1971, based in Berkeley, CA, USA
Alison Saar, b. in Los Angeles, CA, USA, 1956, based in Los Angeles, CA, USA
Muhannad Shono, b. in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 1977, based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“Curated by the place it temporarily inhabits, Desert X reveals the landscape of the Coachella Valley as a canvas of real and imagined histories, narrating tales of displacement, sovereignty, and adaptation superimposed over visible testaments of time, ” said Garcia-Maestas. “The land of Desert X is no longer the mythical and endless expanses of the American West but has come to include the effects of our ever-growing human presence, ” said Wakefield. “Artists continue to be inspired by the idea of unadulterated nature, but in its search they have also come to recognize that this is an idea and that the realities of the world we live in now are both more complex and contested. Time, light and space permeate every aspect of this work but so too does an urgency to find new sustainable approaches to living in an increasingly imperiled world. ”
“Guided by the belief that art has the power to transform, heal, and inform, a remarkable constellation of works by artists from around the world invites new understanding, hope, and alternate perspectives on vital issues that affect our communities and the environment, ” said Desert X Executive Director Jenny Gil.
ARTISTS’ WORKS
Unsui (Mirror) by Sanford Biggers features two towering sequin sculptures set against the expansive desert sky. Clouds, a recurring motif in Biggers’s work, symbolize freedom, boundlessness, and interconnection. Drawing on the artist’s study of Buddhism, these clouds — or unsui (“clouds and water” in Japanese) — embody unencumbered movement. Shimmering in the desert light, they evoke a feeling of timelessness and transcendence. Their presence in the arid desert, where clear skies often prevail, serves as a powerful promise of much needed water and a message of hope.Desert X 2025 installation view of Sanford Biggers, Unsui (Mirror), photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
Jose Dávila’s massive, monolithic marble blocks in The act of being together appear splintered across both time and space. Drawing on Robert Smithson’s concept of site/nonsite dialectics, Dávila brings the stone blocks from a quarry a few hundred miles across the U.S. -Mexico border to the Coachella Valley, connecting the two locations by highlighting the void of their origin and the striking presence they create in a foreign landscape. To reach their new home, the blocks had to cross the physical border while also traversing a metaphorical border between the seen and the unseen. Moved by the invisible forces of unknown histories, they evoke the archeological relics of ancient civilizations and the potential future of life beyond our own.
Desert X 2025 installation view of Jose Dávila, The act of being together, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
The Living Pyramid by pioneering artist and philosopher Agnes Denes is a monumental sculpture and environmental intervention on view at Sunnylands Center & Gardens. This first desert iteration of Denes’s pyramid structure is planted with vegetation that is native to the region. Its structure and appearance have transformed since its installation in November 2024 and will continue to evolve through the run of the exhibition according to the slow growth cycles of the desert environment. But it is the life-cycle of the plants - their growth, transformation and eventual death – that animates the pyramid, one of the most iconic forms of human civilization, and in so doing reminds us that within care and nurture can be found the spirit of our endurance.
Desert X 2025 installation view of Agnes Denes, The Living Pyramid at Sunnylands Center & Gardens, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
Traversing various locations in the Coachella Valley over the course of Desert X, Cannupa Hanska Luger’s nomadic caravan, G.H.O.S.T. Ride (Generative Habitation Operating System Technology), uses speculative fiction to envision sustainable, land-based futures. This project expands on Luger’s Future Ancestral Technologies (FAT) series and imagines Indigenous communities utilizing innovative technologies to live in attunement with land and water, challenging colonial paradigms of extraction and exploitation. Incorporating industrial detritus, ceramics and other artist-made objects along with new video and sound work, this time-jumping caravan is equipped with water and light gathering technologies dreamed from Luger’s speculative fiction ethos.
Desert X 2025 installation view of Cannupa Hanska Luger, G.H.O.S.T. Ride (Generative Habitation Operating System Technology), photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X
Five things you can’t wear on TV by Raphael Hefti expresses the borrowed poetry of a climactic phenomenon. A black woven polymer fiber, originally designed for light, durable fire hoses, coated on one side with a reflective finish connects two distant points forming a single line or artificial horizon. The enormous force held in the taut material causes it to oscillate in the wind, vibrating like a gently strummed guitar string and creating a visual harmonic that resonates with the surrounding landscape. By splitting the air in front of us, Hefti’s work brings the effects of great distance to proximity and draws our attention to the ongoing performance of light and space.Desert X 2025 installation view of Raphael Hefti, Five things you can’t wear on TV, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X
To Breathe – Coachella Valley by Kimsooja (opening March 15-June 1, 2025) invites an interaction with the essential elements of the desert: the texture of sand underfoot, the air we breathe, and the light around us. Drawing inspiration from bottaris, the fabric-encased bundles of belongings prominent in her work and in Korean culture, she describes this installation as a “bottari of light. ” By wrapping the glass surface in a unique optical film, the physical architecture is transformed into a dynamic spectrum of light and color. The work reflects its counterpart work in the desert of AlUla, Saudi Arabia while also acknowledging the historical origins of the Light and Space movement on the West Coast of the U.S.
In the desert, where concepts of shelter, freedom, expansiveness, and enclosure have shaped midcentury dreams. Kapwani Kiwanga’s Plotting Rest, a pavilion-like structure (opening March 15-June 1, 2025) reflects on the iconic midcentury design found in Palm Springs, signaling protection while offering none. Its roof, a lattice made of interlocking triangles, hovers overhead, allowing the elements to pass through and casting ever-changing shadows on the ground. Inspired by the quilting motif known as “flying geese, ” this pattern resonates with the contested narratives of the Underground Railroad, serving as an encrypted guidance system for those fleeing slavery toward the perceived freedom of the North. Kiwanga’s sculpture fosters contemplation and hope while reminding us that successive migrations mark history.
Sarah Meyohas’s poetic and immersive installation Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams showcases “caustics, ” light patterns formed by the refraction or reflection of light through curved surfaces, recalling ancient timekeeping technology like sundials and paying homage to 20th-century land art. While this optical effect often occurs naturally, such as at the bottom of a swimming pool, Meyohas transforms it, using innovative light-shaping technology enabling visitors to project sunlight onto a ribbon-like structure cascading across the desert floor. As visitors manipulate the panels to shape their own cinematic journey, they encounter unexpected visual illusions — waves, moiré patterns, or perhaps a mirage — stirring a longing for the desert’s ever-present water.Desert X 2025 installation view of Sarah Meyohas, Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
The dynamic landscape of Adobe Oasis by Ronald Rael champions the revival and reimagining of traditional yet neglected earthen building techniques by integrating contemporary technologies and presenting them as sustainable and innovative housing solutions for the future amid the climate crisis. Brought to life through a unique 3D printing process, utilizing robotic programming to create structures entirely from mud, Rael’s corrugated earthen ribbons mimic the texture of palm trees, inspired by the legacy of Coachella Valley’s palm oases, which have thrived on desert waters for millennia. Passageways frame views of the land and sky, fostering solitude and connection — reflecting the cyclical flow of geologic time.
Desert X 2025 installation view of Ronald Rael, Adobe Oasis, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X
In Soul Service Station, Alison Saar, continues her alchemical exploration of salvage, both as a material and metaphorical act. Soul Service Station reimagines a sculptural intervention Saar created in 1986 in Roswell, New Mexico. Drawing inspiration from gas stations that have populated the American West, including the Coachella Valley, Saar’s station offers more than practical services; it provides fuel for the soul. Community-crafted elements combined with furnishings made from salvaged materials, form a sanctuary that merges collective dreams with Saar’s vision of a spiritual oasis. Further enriching the experience, a repurposed gas pump plays poems by Los Angeles–based poet Harryette Mullen. The work serves as a sanctuary for travelers, a place to pause, heal, and carry forward the aspirations, histories, and voices.Desert X 2025 installation view of Alison Saar, Soul Service Station, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X
Muhannad Shono’s What Remains reflects on the fluidity of identity and land, presenting a land without fixed identity, continuously shaped by nature’s forces –– pliable and transient, yet heavy with meaning. While wind typically poses a challenge for artworks, Shono cleverly makes it a collaborator infusing long strips of fabric with the native sand, allowing them to move freely and amplifying the ever-changing state of the dunes. As the wind direction shifts, the natural process of aeolian transportation is interrupted, causing the fabric to tangle and form chaotic bundles suggesting a restlessly changing relic or memory. Suspended between the pull of gravity and the relentless force of the wind, the work evokes a home that cannot be contained, a narrative that cannot settle, and a place that refuses to stay still.Desert X 2025 installation view of Muhannad Shono, What Remains, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X
Exhibition Dates
March 8–May 11, 2025
Please note the works Kimsooja To Breathe – Coachella Valley and Kapwani Kiwanga Plotting Rest will be unveiled on March 15 and remain on view through June 1, 2025.
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Press release courtesy of Desert X
Desert X 2025 Installation Images Credits
All Desert X 2025 installation views, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
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