Desert X has returned to the Coachella Valley for its fifth edition, running from March 8 to May 11, 2025. This highly anticipated international art exhibition once again activates the vast desert landscape with a compelling display of site-specific installations. Under the guidance of Artistic Director Neville Wakefield and Co-Curator Kaitlin Garcia Maestas, this year’s iteration features eleven works by artists hailing from Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East.
An ambitious exploration of humanity’s connection to nature, the exhibition sheds light on how these relationships are continually reshaped by the forces of time and environment. By using both physical forms and ephemeral elements like light and wind, the installations challenge linear perceptions of time and invite visitors to tune into the desert’s rich, ancient knowledge. According to Garcia Maestas, “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.”
Wakefield added, “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. 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.”
An Exploration of Art and Place
Desert X 2025 installation view of Agnes Denes, The Living Pyramid at Sunnylands Center & Gardens, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
This year’s Desert X installations are as diverse and compelling as the desert terrain itself, ranging from monumental sculptures to immersive interventions.
Sanford Biggers’s Unsui (Mirror) is a striking meditation on freedom and transcendence. Two towering sculptures, shimmering with sequins, rise dramatically against the expansive desert skies. These cloud-like forms, inspired by the artist’s study of Buddhism, reflect the concepts of unencumbered movement and interconnectedness. Their glimmering surfaces catch the desert light, mirroring the interplay between temporality and permanence while serving as symbols of nourishment and hope in an arid climate.
Jose Dávila presents an evocative commentary on borders and history with The Act of Being Together. Massive marble blocks sourced from across the U.S.-Mexico border find a new home amidst the Coachella Valley’s stark landscape. Poised between fragmentation and unity, these blocks evoke archaeological relics while drawing attention to unseen histories and the cultural voids left in their wake.
At Sunnylands Center & Gardens, Agnes Denes reimagines her iconic structure with The Living Pyramid. This monumental environmental intervention is layered with native desert plants, cycling through life, death, and regeneration with the evolving seasons. Celebrating the impermanence of all living things, the work highlights the fragility of nature and humanity’s intertwined future.
Cannupa Hanska Luger introduces a multimedia, nomadic caravan titled G.H.O.S.T. Ride (Generative Habitation Operating System Technology). This bold installation imagines Indigenous communities utilizing futuristic technologies to coexist with the environment. Incorporating ceramics, industrial materials, video, and sound, the caravan invites us to rethink colonial practices of exploitation in favor of sustainable, land-based futures.
Raphael Hefti brings the subtle interactions of material and force into focus with Five Things You Can’t Wear on TV. A black polymer fiber stretched taut between two points continuously reacts to the desert’s unpredictable winds. The fiber vibrates and oscillates, creating sculptural harmonics that invite viewers to contemplate the desert’s elemental forces and the interplay of distance and proximity.
Desert X 2025 installation view of Raphael Hefti, Five Things You Can’t Wear on TV, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
Kimsooja offers an immersive experience with To Breathe – Coachella Valley. Opening in mid-March, the work transforms architecture into a living canvas. By wrapping glass surfaces in optical film, Kimsooja creates a spectrum of shifting light and color, bridging past influences from her work in AlUla, Saudi Arabia, to the roots of the Light and Space movement in Southern California.
With Plotting Rest, Kapwani Kiwanga examines the concept of shelter and freedom. The work features a pavilion-like structure inspired by the “flying geese” quilting motif, a pattern historically associated with the Underground Railroad. Its porous design allows shadows to shift throughout the day, symbolizing the transient nature of refuge and the human impulse for migration.
Sarah Meyohas draws visitors into her poetic installation Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams. Manipulating sunlight with innovative technology, this work projects dazzling, liquid-like light patterns onto a cascading structure. These optical illusions, reminiscent of natural phenomena such as rippling water, evoke a longing for the sustaining presence of water in the desert.
Ronald Rael’s Adobe Oasis reinvents traditional earthen architecture for a modern era. Created using robotic 3D printing, the installation is composed of mud ribbons that echo the texture of Coachella Valley’s ancient palm oases. Offering glimpses of the horizon through its sculptural passageways, Adobe Oasis champions sustainable building practices in response to climate challenges.
Alison Saar’s Soul Service Station reimagines a gas station as a spiritual sanctuary. Built from salvaged materials and enriched by community participation, the structure features poetic elements like a repurposed gas pump reciting Los Angeles-based poet Harryette Mullen’s words. This thoughtful reimagining turns a symbol of industry into a refuge for the soul.
Muhannad Shono closes the exhibition with What Remains. Shono balances fabric and native sand in his wind-driven installation, mimicking the restless dance of desert dunes. The piece represents the constant, chaotic shifts of identity, land, and memory, creating a vivid interplay between material permanence and the ephemeral power of nature.
Reflecting on a Transformative Experience
Desert X 2025 installation view of Alison Saar, Soul Service Station, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
Desert X 2025 captures a profound meeting point between artistic vision and the vast, resilient energy of the natural world. The exhibition, free and open to all, invites participants to rethink their ecological impact, contemplate the fragility of history, and envision sustainable futures. The exhibition is a call to action, urging us to reconnect with our shared spaces and collectively imagine paths toward renewal and harmony. For visitors ready to step into this unfolding narrative, Desert X offers a breathtaking and vital artistic odyssey in the heart of the desert. Executive Director Jenny Gil emphasizes this mission, stating that Desert X is “guided by the belief that art has the power to transform, heal, and inform.”
