The biennial Desert X has returned to California’s Coachella Valley for its 2025 edition. The artists featured this year offer fresh perspectives on a world increasingly shaped by human presence. For many, this manifests as an exploration of time within spaces where ancestral wisdom converges—and sometimes clashes—with contemporary visions of our shared future. As the most tangible marker of human transformation, architecture serves as the foundation for numerous projects, ranging from pavilion-like structures to more understated forms.

Sanford Biggers’s Unsui (Mirror) presents two towering sequin sculptures set against the vast desert sky. Clouds, a recurring motif in Biggers’s work, represent freedom, boundlessness, and interconnectedness. Rooted in the artist’s study of Buddhism, the title references unsui, a Japanese term meaning “clouds and water,” symbolizing fluidity and movement without constraint. Their presence in the arid landscape—where clear skies dominate—becomes a poignant gesture of hope, offering the promise of much-needed water in an environment shaped by its absence.

Desert X 2025 is on display through May 11. More information can be found here: https://desertx.org/

 Follow me on Instagram: @jg_travels