Anyone who has ever visited the Coachella Valley knows there’s something magical about the vast Californian desert. Every two years, this unique landscape plays host to Desert X, a biennial art festival pushing the boundaries of installation art. The 2025 edition, which recently came to a close, focused on the theme of migration, as evoked through installations by Jose Dávila, Kimsooja and Kapwani Kiwanga, among others. Their works transformed the vast desert into a landscape of movement, memory and identity.
1. Jose Dávila – Marble Migration
In The Act of Being Together, Mexican artist Jose Dávila positioned twelve rough-cut marble blocks in pairs, dispersed throughout the Coachella Valley. Sourced from Mexico, these blocks evoke the theme of migration, highlighting the relationship between origin and destination. By relocating these monumental forms, Dávila underscores both the physical and symbolic nature of transition. His work invites viewers to reflect on their own position in time and space – a quiet yet powerful meditation on presence and absence.
2. Kimsooja – A Breath of Light
In To Breathe, Kimsooja unveils a spiral-shaped pavilion, made out of glass and optical film, which refracts the desert sunlight into a spectrum of rainbows. Drawing inspiration from traditional Korean bottari bundles, the work becomes a poetic symbol of migration and interconnectedness. Visitors are invited to step into this bundle of light, where air, sand, and colour converge. It’s a deeply sensory experience – where art and landscape become one.
3. Kapwani Kiwanga – Interrupted Flight
In Plotting Rest, Kapwani Kiwanga presents a structure that, while appearing to offer shelter, remains open to the elements. The roof – a grid of triangles – is a reference to the flying geese motifs found in quilts used as secret signposts along the Underground Railroad. Supported by stones and palm leaves, the structure embodies the tension between protection and exposure. It offers a quiet pause in the desert, evoking stories of migration and posing a question: What does freedom mean – and for whom?
Desert X goes beyond art
Desert X 2025 has once again demonstrated that art can act as a bridge between disciplines, eras, and emotions. Using the raw beauty of the desert as their canvas, artists like Dávila, Kimsooja, and Kiwanga have not merely given shape to their ideas – they have invited us to see the world in a different way. The full list of installations is available at desertx.org.
