#and my sister is messaging from the bus hub at the mall i work at

[irukasenseii]

O

[festfashions]

Sunglasses from Quay, pants from Forever 21, and top from Hollister.

Desert X

Two years ago around the time of Coachella I started to see all over Instagram these photos taken in the desert with art sculptures. The one that was most Insta-famous was what looked like a mirrored building. After some quick Google research I found out that it was one piece of many for a pop up art exhibit called Desert X.

By the time I was headed to Coachella, I made a plan to visit some of the art pieces. They were super cool and all free (as the event is produced by a not-for-profit organization).

This year, somewhere, probably in one of many emails I get, I saw that Desert X was coming back! So I planned a trip solely to visit the art. 

I know this isn’t about a festival or rave, but it’s still something cool, and a lot of the festivals/raves I go to have an awesome collection of art. Plus, I know sometimes there’s down time for people who attend Coachella and stay outside the festival, so it’s an awesome opportunity to visit some of it!

The basics: Desert X is produced by Desert Biennial, a not-for-profit 501(C)(3) charitable organization founded in 2015 to bring international artists to the Coachella Valley to create art, engage viewers and focus attention on the valley’s environment.

From their site “[Desert X’s] natural wonders as well as socio-political-economic issues that make it vibrant, curious and exciting.” And it definitely is.

It takes place Feb 9 - April 21, 2019 all along Coachella Valley, CA. The art pieces are spread out, and some require some walking or hiking to from where you can park your car.

You can download the app to find the locations, but for me, it was much more fun to get a good old paper map to make a full adventure of the trip. There are hubs where you can pick this up, and we got ours at the Ace Hotel. Once you have the map you’ll see the pieces are spread out all over the Coachella Valley. Driving from top to bottom takes just over an hour, and then stopping in between... we decided to split the map in half, and do the top half this trip in two days. 

The bottom half is closer to where Coachella is actually hosted, and since I’ll probably be there to take photos, I figured this was a good way to split the trip up so it wasn’t overwhelming. 

So I'll share with you what the pieces were like that we visited on this trip, and which were my favorites. I’m looking forward to seeing more though later, I think this is such a unique experience.

First up was Dive-In by Superflex. This one was really easy to get to, right at the start of a hiking trail and very easy to see from the road. One thing that is unique about this art experience is that the locations aren’t always an address, so you use the coordinates provided, plug them into your phone and follow the map then to exactly where the art piece is. Half the fun is finding them, I think.

I loved this piece a lot, and I loved the story it had to tell. If you go to the Desert X site, and click on artists you can see write ups of each piece and what it means. I opened the link once we found each piece because they spoil what it looks like at the top of the page, and it was much more meaningful to read when looking at the piece. I’d suggest doing the same.

This was definitely an Insta-worthy stop too, the bright pink colors contrasting the blue sky. I learned a lot about Coachella Valley visiting this one, like how it all used to be underwater tens of thousands of years ago, and how it probably will be again someday. That’s why this piece, was reminiscent of coral, and would work as a great habitat of sea creatures in the future.

It Exists in Many Forms by Postcommodity was located in a famous mid-century home in Palm Springs. The write up for this one was more interesting than the art piece-- I just really didn’t get it. The house was under construction and there was some audio stuff playing in it but I couldn’t discern what was going on ... we left this one pretty quickly. 

Also this one required tickets, but we were able to get in anyway, but try to get your tickets online before just in case, they’re free, you just have to register.

After this, well, let’s be glad it was a gorgeous day cuz I sent us on a 30-ish minute detour plugging in the wrong coordinates lol. Pro tip copy the coordinates before you hit search in case you need to double check them or type them in again, cuz it takes a while to type them into maps. 

Eventually though we made our way back down a mountain from my detour to the next piece that we actually passed on the way to the detour... yea I know I know whatever...

We found Lover’s Rainbow by Pia Camil. This was also a very Insta-worth piece, and is really cool because it has an identical rainbow located in Baja, Mexico. It has the message of re-inserting rain and fertility into desert territory. I loved how when we arrived there, the shadow from it at one end made the illusion of a heart with the art piece. Call me a romantic. 

From here we went on a treasure hunt to find the next location, hidden in a strip mall. Wormhole by Cynthia Marcela uses empty storefronts in Coachella Valley as well as one in Tijuana, Mexico. That means there’s a total of 6 pieces scattered around to find. 

You really have to look for it, but once you find the correct storefront, you look inside and there’s a TV, streaming the front of one of the other locations, creating a wormhole, ‘a shortcut through space and time’. 

I kept hoping someone would visit the location I was seeing so I could see them on the TV, and I found it really neat to think that someone somewhere else might be seeing me checking out this location. For me, seeing one of these was enough, so you can pick one that’s near where other art is to make it less driving all around.

We opted for one more this day, and it was Peace is the Only Shelter by Mary Kelly. This was another one that was listed as having 3 locations, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. All 3 were relatively close together, but I did have a hard time finding them until I found one -- because then I knew what to look for. The piece is a re-skinned bus stop. 

The piece repurposes Cold War-era peace activism, calling attention to the anti-nuclear Women's Strike for Peace formed in 1961. You visit the bus stop and read about their stance as well as another anti-war movement from the 2000s. Underwhelming by sight, I thought the piece was much more interesting once I read about it online and visited inside to read the posters.

Day 2

We were up to start our art hunt. 

First up was Revolutions by Nancy Baker Cahill... And I made a huge mistake of not downloading the app they said to before getting there, so we didn’t get to experience it. The app is HUGE which is why they suggest downloading it before cuz you’ll need wifi. My phone was like uh... no. Literally, it gave me a pop up saying to connect to wifi and wouldn’t download. It’s a VR experience so you need the app.

This one though is located off the freeway which is the route many of us take into Coachella, so I’ll plan to visit it easily another time. 

From there we kept driving to Jackrabbit, Cottontail & Spirits of the Desert by Cara Romero. This was another of my favorites. You almost miss it if you’re not sure what you’re looking for, but it’s a series of billboard with photographs on them. They show ‘four special time-traveling visitors from Chemehuevi who have come to the ancestral lands of their sister tribes in the Coachella Valley’. 

The billboards go by fast, and only face one way, so I didn’t capture any photos so that I could just experience them. I really liked learning about and taking a peek at these ancestral visitors. 

Western Flag by John Gerrard is located right next to the Palm Springs visitors Center, and another one that is easily visitable on your drive into Palm Springs. It’s a giant box with one side hosting a screen simulation of the site of the world’s first major oil find in Spindletop, TX in 1901. The piece shows what looks like a flag pole with and endless stream of black smoke as the flag. The visual runs in parallel with the real site in Texas, with the sun rising in the video at the appropriate times and the days getting longer and shorter according to the seasons.

While all the pieces are making a statement, I’d say this one made me feel the most ‘awkward’ in the way that art can when it makes you think about things.

Our next stop took us up to Desert Hot Springs where two pieces are located. They’re relatively close to each other and -whoops- once again I got some coordinates wrong that tried to take us down a closed up road. We had to search cross streets as an alt way to the art because the coordinates weren’t going to take us a legal way...

Ghost Palm by Kathleen Ryan was a hard one to find as it was built with clear materials. Once we walked closer and closer to it we could see it better, and unfortunately with I think a lot of wind and rain some of it has fallen apart, but it was still clearly a meticulously recreated palm tree, matching those found around California. 

This was probably one of the furthest we had to walk to from where we parked our car, but still was not very far. 

We then found ourselves in a neighborhood for the next one which had a part 1 and part 2. Going Nowhere Pavilion #01 by Julian Hoeber was a cool structure winding within itself. This piece and its sister piece were commentaries on psychology and the human mind. This piece was about how ‘what is inside and outside the self can quickly become indiscernible’.

The sister piece was located in the small pool of the abandoned house next door. A pink painted pool had the sculpture of a man’s head in center of the floor of the pool. Both pieces were interesting to check out, but a little to over my head. I did like how they were tucked into a neighborhood, how cool would it be for all neighborhoods to have such interesting pieces on vacant lots?

The last piece we checked out was SPECTER by Sterling Ruby. An eye popping piece with a vibrant construction orange color it looks beautiful against the desert tones. The sun was hitting it in amazing ways as well, creating a reflection on the sand, and unique colors on each side even though they were all the same. 

I felt like I could sit and stare at this piece all day and watch how it changed with the environment around it. What would it look like at sunset? In the night would it glow?

I’d like to visit this one again if I can when I go back to Coachella at another time of the day.

So there it is, part one of my Desert X adventure. I’m excited to explore the other pieces, and I’m really glad I dedicated some time to drive around and find them. It’s a fun adventure and something out of the ordinary from our digital based lives. 

Not every piece will connect with you, and some that didn’t connect with me may connect with you, so I’d urge you to explore each piece on your own vs taking my opinions. Art is subjective, make the experience yours.