Desert X 2021, Coachella Valley, CA
Every two years since 2017, Desert X has turned a stretch of the Coachella Valley into a playground for massive art installations that offer visually impactful but often provocative thoughts about the surrounding desert environment.
Eduardo Sarabia, “The Passenger,” Using petates, traditional rugs woven from palm fibers, the Mexican artist has transformed the legacy of desert journeys, migrations and searches for a better future into a triangular maze.
Nicholas Galanin, “Never Forget,” The Alaskan artist has co-opted the instantly recognizable letterforms of the Hollywood sign—which, when erected in 1923, served as an advertisement for the whites-only Hollywoodland housing development—into a 45-foot tall, impossible-to-ignore reminder of the indigenous Cahuilla people’s claim to the area. “The chosen narrative of Palm Springs is one of Hollywood,” Galanin says of the work’s location, and he hopes its visibility will “invite everyone to understand these histories.”
Xaviera Simmons, “Because You Know Ultimately We Will Band A Militia,” On a barren stretch of Gene Autry Trail flanked by power lines and ads, the New York artist has turned a series of billboards into monuments that speak to reverence, resistance and the redistribution of resources. Simmons says that “billboards have a way of constructing whiteness,” so here she has mixed public domain images from the Met with bold text statements that together allow people of color to self-define their monuments.
Ghada Amer, “Women’s Qualities,” The Egyptian-born, New York-based artist continues a 2001 series in which she asks people on the street to share qualities that they identify with or to which they have been ascribed. For this iteration on Sunnylands’ circular lawn, you can “listen to the equality of women according to the people of Palm Springs” as planters bloom over time and spell out a ring of words: strong, caring, determined, beautiful, loving, nurturing, resilient.
Serge Attukwei Clottey, “The Wishing Well,” Water scarcity unites both Palm Springs and Clottey’s home in Ghana (and, as time goes on, an increasing number of places in the world). Here, the artist has used yellow plastic Kufuor gallons, a water-toting vessel that’s a symbol of that scarcity (and one of colonialism, as they were introduced by Europeans), to create a yellow brick road of sorts.
Zahrah Alghamdi, “What Lies Behind the Walls,” Slabs of regional cements, soils and dyes that have been assembled into a monolithic wall.
Alicja Kwade, “ParaPivot” (sempiternal clouds), The Sculpture consists of interlocking frames supporting large blocks of white marble that appear as ice calved from a distant glacier. The array of steel and stone draws viewers into the frame of this massive, yet fragile, universe where simple forms yield complex meanings.The result is an illusion of instability. This wobbling perception of size and relationship lies at the heart of the work, as with every step, the sculpture and its components reform into new combinations. Time and space become distorted as rocks pulled from 200 million years ago levitate into the clear blue sky. Like the experience of desert itself, ParaPivot, even as it is made up largely of emptiness, is dense with meaning.
Kim Stringfellow, “Jackrabbit Homestead,” A 122-square-foot cabin stuck between the Palm Desert Chamber of Commerce and a CVS that sparks conversations about the mid-century homesteading experience.
Felipe Baeza, “Finding Home in My Own Flesh,” the mural acknowledges the Coachella Valley as both a border region and a queered space, and honors immigrants and queer people of color who have been an integral part of the region’s story. While these communities have long populated the area, they’re often omitted from its better known histories.
Christopher Myers, “The Art Of Taming Horses,” the sculpture tell the story of two ranchers — one Mexican and one African-American — whose personal adversities and love for raising horses led them to create a welcoming community in the place that eventually would become Palm Springs. While the story is fictional, it speaks to the truths that exist in the slippage between history and mythology. Altanviro stands in for the thousands of Mexican migrants who have come to call the Coachella Valley home, and Loper reminds us that long ago many who fled bondage in search of freedom traveled south, perhaps even through this desert, on their way to free townships along Mexico’s northern border. This story of acceptance, although never perfect, echoes among many communities that have found a welcoming home in this place.
Curated by Desert X Artistic Director Neville Wakefield and Co-curator César García-Alvarez. Presented by Richard Mille.
Photographs by Lance Gerber. Courtesy the Artist and Desert X.
