Desert X 2025 has once again transformed California’s Coachella Valley into an open-air gallery, where international artists engage with the desert’s shifting landscape and cultural history. Running from March 8th to May 11th, the biennial exhibition, curated by Neville Wakefield and Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, explores themes of Indigenous futurism, design activism, and the impact of human intervention on nature.
The exhibition reimagines the desert not as an empty expanse but as a layered site of memory, resistance, and transformation. Through site-specific installations, artists examine the region’s ecological and political tensions, blending architecture, sculpture, and ephemeral interventions shaped by wind, light, and time.
Among the highlights is Agnes Denes’ The Living Pyramid, a monumental land sculpture planted with native desert flora. As the seasons change, the vegetation grows, blooms, and fades, embodying cycles of renewal and decay. Denes’ work is both a reflection on civilization’s legacy and an evolving social construct, engaging communities in its ongoing care.
Sanford Biggers’ Unsui (Mirror) presents towering, sequin-covered cloud sculptures that shimmer under the desert sun. Drawing on Buddhist philosophy, the work symbolizes movement, impermanence, and transformation. Positioned at the James O. Jessie Desert Highland Unity Center, it also speaks to the histories of Black communities in Palm Springs, addressing displacement and resilience.
Jose Dávila’s intervention plays with site and non-site dynamics, transporting unaltered marble blocks from a quarry across the U.S.-Mexico border. The stacked stones appear as ancient ruins scattered across the desert, challenging perceptions of place, migration, and visibility. The work reflects on borders both physical and conceptual, raising questions about material displacement and cultural memory.
With installations spanning from monumental land art to delicate optical illusions, Desert X 2025 continues its mission of fostering dialogue between contemporary art, environmental awareness, and global narratives. Free and open to the public, the exhibition invites visitors to explore, reflect, and engage with the desert as both subject and collaborator.
Photography by LANCE GERBER