Desert X 2025 Exhibition Opens with 11 Art Installations in Californias Coachella ValleySave this picture!Desert X 2025 installation view of Sarah Meyohas, Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams. Courtesy of Desert X.. Image Lance GerberDesert X is a site-specific international art exhibition taking place this year across the Coachella Valley, California. Its fifth edition, curated by Artistic Director Neville Wakefield and co-curator Kaitlin Garcia Maestas, opened on March 10, 2025, featuring eleven installations by international artists integrated into the desert landscape. Artists were invited to propose alternative ways of perceiving a world "increasingly encircled by the transformational effects of nature and humanity," through physical installations in specific locations within the California desert. In this context, architecture is understood as the most visible evidence of human transformation, while immaterial elements, such as wind and light, highlight the transformative effects not only of human activity but also of nature itself. The exhibition is free and open to all, running through May 11, 2025. Below are images and descriptions of the eleven art installations featured in this year's Desert X exhibition.Unsui (Mirror) / Sanford BiggersSave this picture!Sanford Biggers' installation features two towering sequin sculptures set against the desert sky. Drawing on the study of Buddhism, these clouds or unsui ("clouds and water" in Japanese) embody unencumbered movement. Standing over 30 feet tall, the sequin clouds shift with sunlight and wind. They symbolize change and continuity, forecasting rain and storms while reflecting the interplay between natural phenomena and cultural symbolism. Biggers' installation is situated at the James O. Jessie Desert Highland Unity Center in Palm Springs, where a historic Black community was established in the 1960s after the forced displacement of residents of color from Section 14, a square mile of land near downtown Palm Springs. Activists whose families reside in Desert Highland Gateway Estates continue toward reparations efforts today. Related Article UNAM Sculpture Space: Integrating Art and Culture into Mexico's Natural Landscape The act of being together / Jose DvilaSave this picture!The marble blocks used in Jose Dvila's piece are unaltered extractions from a quarry a few hundred miles across the U.S.Mexico border. Moved by the invisible forces of unknown histories, they evoke the archeological relics of ancient civilizations and the potential future of life beyond this life. Drawing on Robert Smithson's concept of site/non-site dialectics, Dvila connects the two locations by highlighting the presence and absence of the rough-hewn forms. By taking the material from one place and adding it to another, he establishes a relationship between the void of its origin and the presence it creates in a foreign landscape. Like ruins in reverse, Dvila's marble formations suggest a suspended state of becoming, representing the end of something old and the beginning of something new.The Living Pyramid / Agnes DenesSave this picture!The Living Pyramid is both a monumental sculpture and an environmental intervention. Its hierarchical form echoes the idea of Sunnylands as the "Camp David of the American West," a place where political and thought leaders from around the globe have convened "to promote world peace and facilitate international agreement." At the same time, the pyramid constantly changes. Planted with native vegetation, its structure and appearance transform according to the slow growth cycles of the desert environment. This process reflects the organic development of nature as it interacts with the pyramid, one of the most iconic forms of human civilization. Activated through educational programs promoting environmental awareness and conservation, the installation represents a social construct that proposes a micro-society of people responsible for its construction, planting, and ongoing care.G.H.O.S.T. Ride (Generative Habitation Operating System Technology) / Cannupa Hanska LugerSave this picture!G.H.O.S.T. Ride expands Luger's Future Ancestral Technologies (FAT) series, which uses speculative fiction to envision sustainable, land-based futures. The series imagines Indigenous communities utilizing innovative technologies to live in attunement with land and water, challenging colonial paradigms of extraction and exploitation. Camouflaged in reflective vinyl, the vehicle merges with the environment, acting as a mirror and an extension of the landscape. It incorporates industrial detritus, ceramics, and a tipi, and is equipped with speculative water and light gathering systems. Visitors may encounter the vehicle's time-traveling occupants, a family from an undefined future, offering insights into possible survival modes. G.H.O.S.T. Ride invites visitors to reimagine coexistence among human and nonhuman realms, encouraging reflection on the enduring significance of land over the fleeting nature of human infrastructure.Five things you can't wear on TV / Raphael HeftiSave this picture!In this piece, Hefti uses a black woven polymer fiber, originally designed for light but durable fire hoses, coated on one side with a reflective finish. Tension holds this flat band of material overhead between two distant points, forming a single line or artificial horizon. The force held in the taut material causes it to oscillate in the wind. This vibration resembles a gently strummed guitar string, creating a visual harmonic that resonates with the surrounding landscape. The oscillating line blurs visitors' sense of spatial perception, scale, and distance in its kinetic movement. Wind, weather, and ambient light amplify this seemingly arbitrary movement, transforming it into an environmental condition. By splitting the air, Five things you can't wear on TV draws attention to the ongoing performance of light and space, expressing the poetry of a climatic phenomenon.Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams / Sarah MeyohasSave this picture!Sarah Mehoyas' immersive installation showcases "caustics," light patterns formed by the refraction or reflection of light through curved surfaces. While this optical effect often occurs naturally, such as at the bottom of a swimming pool, Meyohas transforms it using light-shaping technology, enabling visitors to project sunlight onto a ribbon-like structure cascading across the desert floor. The installation recalls ancient timekeeping technology like sundials and pays homage to 20th-century land art. Each mirrored panel, crafted using computer algorithms for light manipulation, features a unique pattern, spelling out the poetic phrase, "truth arrives in slanted beams." As visitors adjust the mirrors to sharpen the projected images, they encounter unexpected visual illusions (waves, moir patterns, or perhaps a mirage), stirring a longing for the desert's ever-present water.Adobe Oasis / Ronald RaelSave this picture!Architect, artist, and activist Ronald Rael presents traditional craft techniques in wood, stone, earth, and textiles as sustainable solutions for the future. His work engages with over 10,000 years of earthen building history, offering a counterpoint to the environmental impact of modern architecture. The advantages of adobe (low cost, energy efficiency, fire resistance, and non-toxicity) are enhanced in Rael's installation by technological advancements in additive manufacturing. Adobe Oasis was built using a 3D printing process, utilizing robotic programming to create structures entirely from mud. The 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. For the artist, this land-based project serves as both an artistic endeavor and a research initiative, inviting visitors into a dynamic landscape, where passageways frame views of the land and sky, fostering solitude and connection.Soul Service Station / Alison SaarSave this picture!Soul Service Station reimagines a sculptural intervention the artist created in 1986 in Roswell, New Mexico. Drawing inspiration from gas stations that have populated the American West, the station offers more than practical services; it provides fuel for the soul. Inside the station, a handcrafted sculptural assemblage contains a collection of devotional objects. These 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. At the center stands a life-size, hand-carved female figure, the guardian and healer of the site. Further enriching the experience, a repurposed gas pump plays poems by Los Angeles-based poet Harryette Mullen. Saar's Soul Service Station emulates a sanctuary for travelers, a place to pause, heal, and carry forward aspirations, histories, and voices.What Remains / Muhannad ShonoSave this picture!In this installation, Muhannad Shono presents a version of land without a fixed identity, continuously shaped and reshaped by nature's forces. He infuses long strips of fabric with the native sand, allowing them to move freely and amplifying the ever-changing state of the dunes. The fabric strips, orientated to align with the prevailing winds, follow the contours of the ground, fibrillating just above its surface. As the wind direction shifts, the natural process of aeolian transportation that forms dunes is interrupted, causing the fabric to tangle and form chaotic bundles. Shono describes his work as existing in "a state of tremor," suspended between the pull of gravity and the relentless force of the wind.To Breathe Coachella Valley / KimsoojaIn Kimsooja's To Breathe Coachella Valley installation, a glass structure defines a performance space, inviting the audience to interact with the essential elements of the desert: the texture of sand, the air, and the light. By wrapping the glass surface in an optical film, the artist transforms the physical architecture into a dynamic spectrum of light and color. According to the Kimsooja, "this diffraction film acts as a transparent textile, featuring thousands of vertical and horizontal scratch lines akin to warp and weft, and envelops the architecture in light." This installation references its counterpart located in the desert of AlUla, Saudi Arabia, nearly 8,000 miles away, while also acknowledging the origins of the Light and Space movement on the U.S. West Coast. Images of the installation, along with Kapwani Kiwanga's Plotting Rest exhibit, will be unveiled onPlotting Rest / Kapwani KiwangaThe pavilion explores themes of shelter and freedom, reminiscent of midcentury design in Palm Springs. Its triangular lattice roof allows light and shadows to shift, echoing quilting patterns related to the Underground Railroad and themes of migration and hope. The installation, along with Kimsooja's To Breathe Coachella Valley exhibit, will open onSave this picture!About the artists: Sanford Biggers, b. Los Angeles, CA, USA. 1970, based in New York, NY, USA Jose Dvila, 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. Neuchtel, 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 Image gallerySee allShow less