Desert X is a biennial exhibition that is made up of site-specific installations throughout the desert. The main one is held in the Coachella Valley, but they also have done exhibitions in AlUla, Saudi Arabia. The last one was in the Coachella Valley was in 2021, and I actually blogged about the very first one that was in 2017. I’ve gone to each one since (except not the ones in Saudi Arabi) and 2023 marks the 4th one for the Coachella Valley. The installations are free to the public, and it’s like a fun art scavenger hunt where you just plug in the coordinates (they also have a handy app you can use) and go from location to location. Many are located in open fields where you just park and have to walk a little bit to discover them. A few weeks ago I was able to see three of the 12 installations.
Torkwase Dyson – “Liquid A Place”
“Liquid A Place” is a huge black half dome sculpture. There’s steps in the cross section that you can walk up on. It’s quite striking when you come up to it. It was done by Tokrwase Dyson, who describes herself as “a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure and architecture.”
“Liquid A Place is part of an ongoing series that started from the premise that we are the water in the room, inviting viewers to consider their bodily interconnection with rivers and oceans that surround us. After all, around 60 percent of our bodies and 70 percent of the planet is water, and these waters circulate across our bodies and the planet as they shift states from solid to liquid to gas.
For this iteration of Liquid A Place, Dyson creates a monumental sculpture that is a poetic meditation connecting the memory of water in the body and the memory of the water in the desert. How do we go to the water in our bodies to harvest memory? Can this liquid memory help us reconsider scale and distance as critical forms in holding onto liberatory life practices? What kind of scalable infrastructure can our bodies resist and invent, making cities more livable? How are new geographies formed from the architecture of our bodies?” (via)
Check out more and see a video of the artist’s statement here.
Rana Begum – “No. 1225 Chainlink“
Rana Begum is a Brisigh-Bangladeshi artist. “No. 1225 Chainlink” is a large scale maze-like structure made of metal chain link fencing that you can walk through. The bright yellow color is both striking and strangely also blends in with the surroundings.
“Responding to the ubiquity of the chain-link fence as a pattern spread across the Coachella Valley — a material that is meant to protect but also carries associations of violence — Begum diffuses the material’s role as a divider through her manipulation of its form and color. We notice how light and air, sand and water, as well as people, can filter through her cloud-like pavilion, which offers paths of expansive escape rather than reductive confinement. Constantly changing with the movement of the sun and the visitors inside of it, the work emphasizes that nothing in life is static; everything, from the world outside to our emotions within, is in a continual state of flux.” (via)
Check out more and see a video of the artist’s statement here.
Matt Johnson – “Sleeping Figure”
Matt Johnson’s “Sleeping Figure” is located right at the exit right before Highway 111 from the 10 Freeway. Right as you exit, you immediately park in a small dirt lot and then you have to walk quite a ways on dirt paths until you reach the installation. “Sleeping Figure” is made of a bunch of full size metal shipping containers, stacked to resemble, well, a “Sleeping Figure”. I liked the humorous smiley face painted on where the head would be. When I went, the exhibition had only been open a week, and apparently it has already been tagged with graffiti. However, I don’t think the graffiti interrupts the overall experience and I honestly didn’t realize it wasn’t supposed to be there, since I guess I’m just used to seeing graffiti on shipping containers. Anyway, a fun piece to see nonetheless.
“Sleeping Figure might be a cubist rendition of a classical odalisque, except here the cubes are shipping containers belonging to the globalized movement of goods and trade. Conceived at the time when a Japanese-owned, Taiwanese-operated, German-managed, Panamanian-flagged and Indian- manned container behemoth found itself for six days under Egyptian jurisdiction while blocking the Suez Canal, Johnson’s figure speaks to the crumples and breaks of a supply chain economy in distress. Situated along the main artery connecting the Port of Los Angeles to the inland United States, the sculpture gains local relevance from the recently approved siting of distribution centers in the north of Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs. Casual and laconic, it overlooks the landscape reminding us that the invisible hand of globalism now connected to its container body has come to rest in the Coachella Valley.” (via)
Check out more and see a video on the artists statement here.
Desert X runs through April 30th, 2023. I’m hoping I can go back and catch a few more before it ends! All the info is here. Let me know if you are able to visit any!