First look at Desert X 2023: preview the Coachella Valley art exhibition here
Desert X is returning to the Coachella Valley with its fourth edition of the site-specific, international exhibit.
On Friday, Desert X will host its 2023 Preview Opening ahead of its official opening day set for Saturday, March 4. The exhibition will run through May 7, 2023.
Eleven artists will participate and create exhibits throughout the Coachella Valley. Some are based in California, while others are traveling from different countries to bring their artwork to the valley.
Rana Begum is a London-based artist who created the chainlink installation seen in the images below.
It is located off Portola Road.
You can expect to see a variety of exhibits featuring different mediums, including poetry, sculptures, painting, writing, architecture, design, film, music, choreography, education, and environmental activism.
"The exhibition examines social and environmental themes with a focus on the changes that give form to a world increasingly shaped by climate crisis, globalism, and the political and economic migrations that follow in their wake."
Desert X
An immersive installation is located on Worsley Road between Pierson and Mission Lakes Boulevards in Desert Hot Springs.
"Hylozoic/Desires, or h/d, comprises Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser, a multimedia poet-musician duo whose work centers around the rhythms of love and the beat of belonging."
Descriptions of the artwork explain "h/d uses metaphors from outer space and the natural environment to construct imaginary cosmologies of interferences, entanglements, deep voids, debris, delays, alienation, distance and intimacy. For Desert X, they find this metaphor in salt."
Hemet-based Cahuilla artist Gerald Clarke shared in his artist statement, "While my work may not appear 'traditional,' it is part of a continuation of creative responses to the world that the Cahuilla have exercised since ancient times."
As you view my work, I ask that you do not simply compare or contrast it to “traditional Native American art,” but that you understand my work exists within a spectrum of Indigenous expression that is simultaneously ancient and contemporary. I’m proud and humbled to contribute to the Indigenous Intellectual Tradition. I am not simply acontemporary artist that happens to be Indian. I am a Native American artist. I am a Cahuilla artist. Achama!
Gerald Clarke, Desert X 2023 artist
Clarke's work is displayed at the James O. Jessie Desert Highland Unity Center, 480 W. Tramview Road, Palm Springs.
New York-based artist Torkwase Dyson created Liquid A Place. It is viewable at Homme Adams Park in Palm Desert.
The project is described by Desert X. "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."
Chimera by Héctor Zamora "is a performative action in collaboration with street vendors who are ubiquitous in the Coachella Valley but often invisible in the landscape."
Tschabalala Self has dedicated work to exploring "the emotional, physical and psychological impact of the Black female body as icon and is primarily devoted to examining the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality."
"Pioneer is a monument built in homage to the collective foremothers of contemporary America," reads the installation description provided by Desert X. "Pioneer similarly represents the lost, expelled and forgotten Indigenous, Native and African women whose bodies and labor allowed for American expansion and growth, while also standing as a beacon of resilience for their descendants—a visual representation of their birthright and place within the American landscape. The sculpture celebrates flexibility of the divine feminine spirit and form and the fluidity of identity in contemporary America."
The New-York based artist's work is now found at San Gorgonio Street and Bubbling Wells Road in Desert Hot Springs.
In Palm Springs, artist Lauren Bon displays The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart.
"A lace-like steel sculpture of a to-scale blue whale heart issubmerged in a pool pumped full of Salton-Sea water, but rather than stand as a harbinger ofdeath, the sculpture metabolizes and creates energy and clean water that it deposits back intothe atmosphere, fueling the potential for future life across the run of the exhibition and visuallytransforming itself in the process."
Desert X
It's at 2249 North Palm Canyon Drive.
At Sunnylands Center & Gardens in Rancho Mirage, viewers can experience Amar a Dios en Tierra de Indios, Es Oficio Maternal by Paloma Contreras Lomas.
Visitors encounter a dated car that has screeched to a halt in Sunnylands. An absurd array oftangled limbs of two mysterious characters wearing long hats sprawl out of the car and onto the site’s pristine, manicured grounds. Plush, long hands armed with soft-stuffed guns hang from the windows, barely camouflaged by the artificial overgrowth invading the sculpture. These strange characters accompany the visitor on a caricature of a western–meets–sci-fiaudio-visual tour of the landscape, like a fictional tour of a seemingly familiar world outside, guided by aliens and ghosts.
Desert X
Head to Pierson Boulevard between Foxdale Drive and Miracle Hill Road in Desert Hot Springs to see Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium) by Mario García Torres.
"In his installation for Desert X, the artist replaced the bull component of the mechanical bull with a flat, geometric, reflective surface, slowing down the machine’s movement to reveal, little by little, what this object really is. Placed in the middle of the desert, in the formation of a herd, the work leads us to contemplate the “wild West,” and our relationship to landscape and our role within it; our condition to be both attracted and replaced by failure."
Desert X
Matt Johnson's Sleeping Figure installation is built from shipping containers. The work of the Los Angeles-based artist is visible near I-10, Exit 110 to Railroad Avenue. His artist bio explains "Matt Johnson’ssculptures explore the paradox of visual forms through unorthodox and surprising materials."
A film commissioned by Desert X features Dhaka-based architect Marina Tabassum. It is viewable at desertx.org.
"Tabassum’s Khudi Bari (Bengali for “tiny house”) is an example of a modular mobile home that, in Bangladesh, is inexpensive, durable, and relatively quick and easy to assemble and disassemble with minimum labor, taking advantage of a rigid space-frame structure to save goods and lives in the wake of flash floods on tiny “desert islands” of sand known as “chars” that precariously dot across the Bengal delta."
A selection of photos by Tyre Nichols is also featured in the works on display in this year's Desert X.
“Photography helps me look at the world in a more creative way. It expresses me in ways I cannot write down for people,” he wrote on his website. He preferred landscapes and loved the glow of sunsets most, his family has said.
“My vision is to bring my viewers deep into what I am seeing through my eye and out through my lens,” Nichols wrote. “People have a story to tell, why not capture it.”
Nichols, a 29-year-old father, was on his way home from taking pictures of the sky on Jan. 7, when police pulled him over. He was just a few minutes from the home he shared with his mother and stepfather when he was brutally attacked by five Memphis police officers. He died three days later at a hospital, and the officers have since been charged with second-degree murder and other offenses. A Go Fund Me is here.
You can see Nichols' photography on North Gene Autry Trail between Via Escuela and I-10.
You can learn more about this year's Desert X artists here.
Opening hours and locations: Exhibition opening hours are generally from sunrise to sunset. However, hours and access to installations may vary. Visitors are encouraged to check details for each artist’s work at desertx.org. Free Admission.
The Desert X 2023 map of artist installations will be available for visitors to download online on March 4 at desertx.org and via the Desert X app.
