Coachella Valley, California – it’s spectacularly empty on the drives out in search of scattered works of art in the desert. The miles blur together, only broken by brief appearances of shockingly green hills, the slow churn of windmills, explosions of vibrant wildflowers, and smatterings of noisy cars. When you finally arrive at your destinations, they are marked with an X – it’s all a bit on the nose. It’s at these sites dotted throughout the California desert that people gather, for a few weeks, to check out weird, temporary projects placed here from artists around the world.
Even on a recent March weekend, where the days hit a perfect 75F degrees at the height of California’s spectacular superbloom, the locations that make up Desert X – an ambitious art biennial that stretched for dozens of miles throughout Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley – never had more than a handful of visitors present. In a strangely cyclical fashion, the clusters of people at each stop would rotate out and you would find yourself alone in the desert, staring for some reason at a giant orange rectangle framed by a snowy mountain peak.
The show is undoubtedly a social media moment – Instagram flooded with images of John Gerrard’s Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas), a digital simulation depicting the barren field near Beaumont, Texas of the world’s first major oil discovery, and Sterling Ruby’s massive fluorescent box, Specter, plopped down off a road where drivers can briefly catch a glimpse of it as they zip by at 80mph.
With or without a social media account, the trek through this expansive and daunting, contemporary art treasure hunt was a memorable ride and a case study in extremes. Desert X, which had its first iteration in 2017, demands many things from those who venture out – time, a willingness to get lost when the GPS cuts out, a little sincerity to embrace the concept, and, most practically, a car.
The pieces from the roster of 19 artists largely endured the extreme elements the Coachella Valley threw at them since early February: a treacherously wet winter; incredibly piercing, brilliant sunshine; swirling sand and dust storms. It’s relentless in the desert, and this winter especially. And the nature of this exhibition demanded these artists place their works out here, exposed.
One installation didn’t survive – a large-scale sculptural work by Eric N Mack covering a disused gas-station near the Salton Sea went down in mid-March, and local authorities are investigating the circumstances around its disappearance.
But being so unprotected, as dangerous as it, is a potent part of this exhibition. It’s the desert, in art form: exposed, extreme, uncompromising and a little bit maddening.
The site-specific installations, as expected from a major contemporary art biennial, aren’t just empty splashes of color in a sparse landscape. There’s plenty of social, political and environmental commentary to be found in these works, touching on immigration policy, climate change and Indigenous rights.
The most traditionally beautiful piece was Kathleen Ryan’s Ghost Palm, a superb stop at sunset, the midcentury modern chandelier sparkling in the evening sun. It’s a vision in layers, with different elements to the work revealing itself as you climb the hilltop behind it. Below it all lies the San Andreas Fault, along which Californians and scientists have long-feared a major earthquake will hit.
“The San Andreas Fault and the palm tree oases that trace its presence are created by two massive tectonic plates meeting – the North American plate and the Pacific plate. Water running deep underneath the earth pools into these fissures, thus creating lush palm sanctuaries,” the Desert X curators noted to visitors in the exhibition text. “Ghost Palm mimics what already exists in proximity to it, repositioning itself in nature in an homage. It makes visible our bodily connection to these sites, to the churning of the earth beneath us, and the natural forces we humbly exist within and among.”
It should be said it also makes for an excellent post on the ‘gram.
Western Flag offered a blunt message on the role of the oil industry, set against the beauty of a mountain capped in snow, the hills down its peak now a truly stunning green that’s rarely seen in this desert. The simulation centered on a flagpole spewing black smoke, and you can hear the murmur of the projection alongside the cars rolling down the highway – a jarring reminder of the monumental work’s point, but in miniature. There’s a sense of both urgency and history at play, but this beautiful piece never came across as didactic.
Specter is possibly the most visually arresting installation at Desert X, a bizarre, bright emergency orange covering a large rectangle set in the middle of nowhere. Watching photographers come and go, the randomness of this giant, otherworldly block in the middle of the desert turns into a pure, off-kilter joy.
On the road back into Palm Springs, Jackrabbit, Cottontail & Spirits of the Desert appears in your rear-view mirror. Set opposite typical roadside advertisements, the series of billboards from Cara Romero – who was raised on the Chemehuevi Valley Indian reservation – reminded drivers they’re passing through the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples. “In Romero’s vision, these small but mighty figures have returned to remind us of our deep connections to the land, the stories contained within it, and how we can live in relation to it,” the curators wrote.
The Salton Sea already feels like another world, a sci-fi foray into another dimension. During Desert X, figures danced in the water of this man-made lake, the largest in California, created by accident in 1905. Cecilia Bengolea’s Mosquito Net was striking, seeming so elegant from afar. Up close, that awe transformed into a giggle. Is that a mini horse emerging from the shallow, briny lake? A sculpture of a woman twerking with an octopus? Probably. To be in this otherworldly landscape – as the artist, the art, the viewer – is strange. So the pieces might as well be, too.
Iván Argote’s A Point of View was a more obviously meant-to-be profound experience, as visitors climbed around stepped platforms carved with pointed messages about stewardship of the land in both Spanish and English. Your view does alter here, with every ascent of the five concrete-and-wood platforms looking out over the Salton Sea and your fellow photographers.
Bringing discordant sounds to the desert was another dazzling aspect of this biennial, particularly in the noteworthy Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark by Gary Simmons out in Indio. Found in an old gymnasium, this piece was a stark display of speakers made of wood scavenged from the Treme neighborhood of post-Katrina New Orleans, accompanied by a looped video of musicians inspired by legendary dub producer Lee “Scratch” Perry’s studio, Black Ark. It was powerful, eerie and a little punk.
Another memorable foray was in Palm Desert, a reminder of both what’s considered a classic American experience and a flashback to a scene six million years ago. Somehow effectively, viewers got both with Danish collective Superflex’s Dive-In.
The blocks were reminiscent of coral, and they transformed into that and more on Saturday nights earlier this year. The pink looked beautiful set against the flowering yellow wildflowers, and then, as the sun set, the free screening started. The installation turned into a literal and figurative dive-in, reminding viewers that this desert was once underwater, as projected fish dart around the pink blocks and an ocean soundscape emerged from speakers dotting the grounds.
There was something utterly glorious about a dozen people together in the desert after dark watching this quirky display. It was fun, thought-provoking, and felt genuinely special and specific to this event, this place.
As a young kid who walked up to Mosquito Net said to their dad after reviewing the scene, “It’s so random, though.” For an art exhibition across the sprawling, strange landscape of the Coachella Valley, that’s the highest compliment I could imagine.
Mackenzie Weinger is a journalist and editor currently based in Washington, D.C. She’s written on foreign affairs, politics and art for publications such as the Financial Times, World Politics Review, and The Washington Diplomat, among others. Mackenzie, a Los Angeles native, has a master’s degree in War Studies from King’s College London and a BA in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara.