Desert X returns to California’s Coachella Valley for its fifth edition from March – May 2025. The outdoor exhibition is renowned for bringing awe-inspiring site-specific installations to the landscape. This year, it presents eleven installations that navigate the themes of indigenous futurism, design activism, colonial power, the role of emerging technologies and the impact of humanity on the landscape. The line-up comprises Agnes Denes, Alison Saar, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Jose Dávila, Kapwani Kiwanga, Kimsooja, Muhannad Shono, Raphael Hefti, Ronald Rael and Sanford Biggers. Here are five installations to know.
Agnes Denes, The Living Pyramid
Agnes Denes (b. 1931) is a pioneer of environmental art. Her best-known work, Wheatfield – A Confrontation, was created during spring and summer of 1982. Denes planted a field of golden wheat on two acres of rubble-strewn landfill near Wall Street and the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan (now Battery Park City and the World Financial Center). The Living Pyramid at Sunnylands Center & Gardens continues this strand of her practice. The bright white pyramid structure is planted with vegetation native to the region; it will continue to evolve through the run of the exhibition, according to the slow life cycles of the desert environment – through periods of growth, transformation and, eventually, death.
Sarah Meyohas, Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams
Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams is an experiment in “caustics” – light patterns formed by the refraction or reflection of light, like on the bottom of a swimming pool. Here, conceptual artist Sarah Meyohas (b. 1991), who is known for investigations into the nature and capabilities of emerging technologies, uses innovative light-shaping methods to enable audiences to project sunlight onto a white ribbon-like structure snaking across the desert floor. As visitors manipulate the panels, they will encounter unexpected visual illusions — waves, moiré patterns, or perhaps even a mirage. With this installation, Meyohas recalls ancient timekeeping technologies, like sundials, whilst paying homage to 20th century land art.
Kimsooja, To Breathe – Coachella Valley
Versions of Kimsooja’s (b. 1957) mesmerising To Breathe have been exhibited in Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, Japan, Korea The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and USA. For this iteration, the artist has wrapped a glass surface in optical film, creating a dynamic spectrum of light and colour. “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,” Kimsooja says. This approach is based on colour spectrum theory from Chinese Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, whilst also drawing inspiration from bottaris, the fabric-encased bundles of belongings prominent in Korean culture. Kimsooja describes this installation as a “bottari of light”, and the result is an ephemeral and profound viewing experience.
Jose Dávila, The Act of Being Together
Marble is integral to the history of art – think classical Greek and Roman statues, where it was sculpted into flawlessly detailed, likelike forms. Jose Dávila’s The Act of Being Together offers a different perspective on the material; the blocks used in this piece are unaltered extractions from a quarry a few hundred miles across the USA-Mexico border. By taking the rough-hewn material from one place and adding it in another, Dávila connects the two locations – establishing “a relationship between its origin and the striking presence it creates in a foreign landscape.” This piece, in particular, has a political undercurrent: to reach their new home in the Coachella Valley, the stone blocks had to cross the border in an act of migration.
Sanford Biggers, Unsui (Mirror)
Sanford Biggers is a multimedia artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, video, photography, music and performance. He is known for remixing recognisable cultural symbols – like pianos, trees and lotus flowers – and Unsui (Mirror) is no different. It features two towering sequin cloud sculptures, over 30 feet high, set against the expansive desert sky. Clouds are a recurring motif in Biggers’ work; they symbolise freedom, boundlessness and interconnection. These clouds — or unsui (“clouds and water” in Japanese) — draw from Buddhism, embodying unencumbered movement. Shimmering in the desert light, they evoke a feeling of timelessness and transcendence whilst shifting with the sun and wind.
Desert X 2025 is at Coachella Valley, CA, until 11 May.
desertx.org/dx/dx-25-coachella-valley
Image Credits:
1. Desert X 2025 installation view of Kimsooja, To Breathe – Coachella Valley, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
2. Desert X 2025 installation view of Sarah Meyohas, Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X, the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery.
3. Desert X 2025 installation view of Agnes Denes, The Living Pyramid at Sunnylands Center & Gardens, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
4. Desert X 2025 installation view of Kimsooja, To Breathe – Coachella Valley, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
5. Desert X 2025 installation view of Jose Dávila, The Act of Being Together, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X.
6. Desert X 2025 installation view of Sanford Biggers, Unsui (Mirror), photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X, the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
