By Crystal Harrell
This year’s Desert X art exhibition returns—reflecting on the desert’s deep time evolutions and reframing ideas and wilderness, and exploring themes of Indigenous futurism, design activism, colonial power asymmetries. All 11 art installations, exposing humanity on the land and the role of emerging technologies in our contemporary society, will be on display through May 11. This year’s exhibits were curated by Desert X Artistic Director Neville Wakefield and Co-curator Kaitlin Garcia -Maestas.
From its beginning, the Desert X organization has called on all its audiences to be brave, engage their sense of adventure, and open their hearts as they seek the various art installations, paying attention not only to their physicality but also to the stories they tell emotionally, historically, or socially.
The Living Pyramid is both a monumental sculpture and an environmental intervention by pioneering artist and activist Agnes Denes. Commissioned as part of Desert X 2025, the work unites Denes’ powerful public landworks with her ongoing exploration of the pyramid—a form that has been central to the artist’s practice throughout a career spanning more than half a century. For Denes, who was born in Budapest in 1931 and lived in New York since 1954, “art exists in a dynamic, evolutionary world where objects are processes and forms are dynamic patterns, where measure and concepts are relative and reality itself is forever changing.” The Living Pyramid bears witness to this.
“While the pyramids are based on mathematics, and thus achieve a kind of perfection, they contain all the imperfections they are dealing with or are representing and visualizing,” Denes says. Activated through educational programs promoting environmental awareness and conservation, the tiers of The Living Pyramid extend beyond visible structure and in effect become a social construct that cultivates a microsociety of people responsible for its construction, planting, and ongoing care.
Alison Saar’s Soul Service Station reimagines a sculptural intervention Saar created in 1986 in Roswell, New Mexico. Drawing inspiration from gas stations that have populated the American West, including the Coachella Valley, Saar’s station offers more than practical services; it provides fuel for the soul. She invites weary travelers to get “their blues flushed, spirits inflated, hearts charged, and souls filled.”
Inside the station, a sculptural assemblage handcrafted by Saar contains a collection of devotional objects. Saar has collaborated with Coachella Valley students to create foil repoussé medallions expressing prayers and wishes for healing and hope. These community-crafted elements, combined with furnishings made from salvaged materials, form a sanctuary that merges collective dreams with Saar’s vision of a spiritual oasis. At the center stands a life-size, hand-carved female figure, the guardian and healer of the site, exuding strength and protection.
Rael brought Adobe Oasis to life through a unique 3D printing process, utilizing robotic programming to create structures entirely from mud. The corrugated earthen ribbons mimic the texture of palm trees, inspired by the legacy of Coachella Valley’s palm oases, which have thrived on desert waters for millennia.
Ronald Rael’s Adobe Oasis invites visitors into a dynamic landscape, where passageways frame views of the land and sky, fostering solitude and connection—reflecting the cyclical flow of geologic time. For Rael, this land-based project serves as both an artistic endeavor and a research initiative, with each of his 3D-printed adobe structures building on the last, advancing his vision for sustainable housing alternatives.
The first Desert X took place in 2017 and included 16 artists who created works for locations from Whitewater Preserve to Coachella. The exhibition and each of the artists received grand acclaim. Since then, a total of four biennial exhibitions have taken place in the Coachella Valley, welcoming an audience of over 1.7M. Since 2020, the organization has engaged in exhibitions outside the United States and helped establish the Desert X AlUla exhibition, in the desert of Saudi Arabia bringing together artists from across that region as well as those from Europe and the U.S.
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 map for Desert X 2025 is available via the official app and website at www.desertx.org.
