#desertx2025

Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams by Sarah Meyohas 2, Desert X 2025, Coachella Valley, California

Sarah Meyohas’ sublime and seductive imagery blends analog and digital technologies to illuminate the systems shaping contemporary society. As an artist, inventor, and economist, she investigates the aesthetic and creative potential within science and technology, driven by humanity’s fascination with optics and perception.

Her 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 innovative light-shaping technology enabling visitors to project sunlight onto a ribbon-like structure cascading across the desert floor.

Read more https://desertx.org/dx/dx-25-coachella-valley/sarah-meyohas

Desert X is produced by The Desert Biennial, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization founded in California, conceived to produce recurring international contemporary art exhibitions that activate desert locations through site-specific installations by acclaimed international artists. Its guiding purposes and principles include presenting public exhibitions of art that respond meaningfully to the conditions of desert locations, the environment and Indigenous communities; promoting cultural exchange and education programs that foster dialogue and understanding among cultures and communities about shared artistic, historical, and societal issues; and providing an accessible platform for artists from around the world to address ecological, cultural, spiritual, and other existential themes.

Visit the website https://desertx.org/

Palms, Sky, Clouds, Mountains 2, Desert X 2025, Coachella Valley, California

A view from downtown Palm Springs

Unsui (Mirror) by Sanford Biggers, Desert X 2025, Coachella Valley, California

Sanford Biggers is a multimedia artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, video, photography, music, and performance. As an artistic intermediary, he disrupts established narratives, weaving U.S. history into broader global frameworks. By remixing cultural symbols and intervening in historical forms, he complicates collective mythologies and reimagines traditions. His work reflects personal experiences, from his early engagement with graffiti art in Los Angeles to his time living in Japan, shaping his ability to bridge disparate cultural and historical contexts. Unsui (Mirror) features two towering sequin sculptures set against the expansive desert sky. Clouds, a recurring motif in Biggers’ work, symbolize freedom, boundlessness, and interconnection. Drawing on Biggers’ study of Buddhism, these clouds — or unsui (“clouds and water” in Japanese) — embody unencumbered movement. Shimmering in the desert light, they evoke a feeling of timelessness and transcendence.

Read more https://desertx.org/dx/dx-25-coachella-valley/sanford-biggers

Desert X is produced by The Desert Biennial, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization founded in California, conceived to produce recurring international contemporary art exhibitions that activate desert locations through site-specific installations by acclaimed international artists. Its guiding purposes and principles include presenting public exhibitions of art that respond meaningfully to the conditions of desert locations, the environment and Indigenous communities; promoting cultural exchange and education programs that foster dialogue and understanding among cultures and communities about shared artistic, historical, and societal issues; and providing an accessible platform for artists from around the world to address ecological, cultural, spiritual, and other existential themes.

Desert View 2, Desert X 2025, Coachella Valley, California [Prints Available]

The sky above the Coachella Valley during our recent visit to Desert X,

G.H.O.S.T. Ride / (Generative Habitation Operating System Technology) by Cannupa Hanska Luger, Panorama, Desert X 2025, Coachella Valley, California

Cannupa Hanska Luger’s multidisciplinary practice blends bold visual storytelling with an Indigenous worldview, reframing our understanding of collective humanity. Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold, the New Mexico–based artist connects materials including clay, textiles, steel and digital media to ancestral knowledge and contemporary material culture. 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.

Read more https://desertx.org/dx/dx-25-coachella-valley/cannupa-hanska-luger

Desert X is produced by The Desert Biennial, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization founded in California, conceived to produce recurring international contemporary art exhibitions that activate desert locations through site-specific installations by acclaimed international artists. Its guiding purposes and principles include presenting public exhibitions of art that respond meaningfully to the conditions of desert locations, the environment and Indigenous communities; promoting cultural exchange and education programs that foster dialogue and understanding among cultures and communities about shared artistic, historical, and societal issues; and providing an accessible platform for artists from around the world to address ecological, cultural, spiritual, and other existential themes.

Soul Service Station by Alison Saar 2, Desert X 2025, Coachella Valley, California

Alison Saar’s work weaves personal and cultural narratives, drawing inspiration from spiritual traditions, mythology, and African diasporic histories while uncovering the hidden potential of found materials. Central to Saar’s practice is the concept of salvage, both as a material and metaphorical act. She reclaims discarded objects—tin ceiling tiles, weathered wood, glass bottles, and cast-iron pans—imbuing them with renewed vitality and purpose. This process reflects her dedication to preserving the embedded histories and cultural memories in these items,

Soul Service Station by Alison Saar, Desert X 2025, Coachella Valley, California

Alison Saar’s work weaves personal and cultural narratives, drawing inspiration from spiritual traditions, mythology, and African diasporic histories while uncovering the hidden potential of found materials. Central to Saar’s practice is the concept of salvage, both as a material and metaphorical act. She reclaims discarded objects—tin ceiling tiles, weathered wood, glass bottles, and cast-iron pans—imbuing them with renewed vitality and purpose. This process reflects her dedication to preserving the embedded histories and cultural memories in these items, particularly those connected to Black female identity. Saar’s transformations carry an alchemical quality, turning the mundane into the extraordinary and embodying renewal, resilience, and healing.

Read more https://desertx.org/dx/dx-25-coachella-valley/alison-saar

Desert X is produced by The Desert Biennial, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization founded in California, conceived to produce recurring international contemporary art exhibitions that activate desert locations through site-specific installations by acclaimed international artists. Its guiding purposes and principles include presenting public exhibitions of art that respond meaningfully to the conditions of desert locations, the environment and Indigenous communities; promoting cultural exchange and education programs that foster dialogue and understanding among cultures and communities about shared artistic, historical, and societal issues; and providing an accessible platform for artists from around the world to address ecological, cultural, spiritual, and other existential themes.

The act of being together by Jose Dávila Panorama, Desert X 2025, Coachella Valley, California

Material density, gravity, and time are central to most of Jose Dávila’s practice. Known for sculptures that explore different balances created by opposing forces, Dávila has created a work for Desert X 2025 that spans both space and time. The marble blocks used in this piece are unaltered extractions from a quarry a few hundred miles across the U.S.–Mexico border.

Read more

Desert X is produced by The Desert Biennial, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization founded in California, conceived to produce recurring international contemporary art exhibitions that activate desert locations through site-specific installations by acclaimed international artists. Its guiding purposes and principles include presenting public exhibitions of art that respond meaningfully to the conditions of desert locations, the environment and Indigenous communities; promoting cultural exchange and education programs that foster dialogue and understanding among cultures and communities about shared artistic, historical, and societal issues; and providing an accessible platform for artists from around the world to address ecological, cultural, spiritual, and other existential themes.