DESERT X 2019

Multiple projects across sites in Coachella Valley, CA

Desert X is a biennial that invites US and global contemporary artists to create site-responsive work across the Coachella Valley, in Southern California. The exhibitions provide a platform for artists from around the world to address ecological, cultural, spiritual, and other existential themes. Artists are invited to respond to the environmental and social aspects of the desert.

The projects highlighted here include Cecilia Bengolea, Mosquito Net, 2019 a free-standing sculptural work synthesizing the animistic aspects of dance and the artist’s interest in the ecology of the Salton Sea. Production of Mosquito Net included working closely with the artist to develop a material that could withstand the corrosive effects of the saline lake. Exhibited elsewhere was Superflex’s Dive In, 2019. The project explored the possibility of rising water levels submerging the landscape along with all of the existing human infrastructure in the environment, and the land being reclaimed by marine life. “Using the preferred color palettes of Walter and Leonore Annenberg, Palm Springs, and marine corals, Dive-In merges the recognition that global warming will drastically reshape the habitat of our planet with another more recent extinction: the out- door movie theater.” The artists worked with the Desert X production team, and vendors, to develop a signature pink paint that could be nontoxic for marine life imagining that this sculpture could in fact one day exist under water.

Other production work included supporting projects by Pia Camil, Iman Issa, Gary Simmons, and Sterling Ruby.

Desert X 2019 is organized by Neville Wakefield, Amanda Hunt, Matthew Schum. Produced by Kamil Beski, Lourença Alencar, and Irina Gusin.

Photography by Lance Gerber

Work below by (left to right): Cecilia Bengolea, Gary Simmons, Superflex, Sterling Ruby