The fifth edition of Desert X, the recurring site-specific, international art exhibition will open at sites across the Coachella Valley, California from March 8 – May 11, 2025.
Curated by Artistic Director Neville Wakefield and Co-curator Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, the exhibition will reflect on the desert’s deep time evolutions, challenging us to glean wisdom from its vast knowledge. Delving deeper into nonlinear narratives of time, it will form a space where ancestral wisdom intertwines and collides with contemporary visions for our collective future.
New commissions by artists from around the world will expand upon issues related to indigenous futurism, design activism, colonial power asymmetries and the role of emerging technologies in our contemporary society.
The exhibition will be free and open to all.
Acknowledgement of Native Land
We acknowledge the Cahuilla People as the original stewards of the land on which Desert X takes place. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work with the indigenous people in this place. We pay our respect to the Cahuilla People, past, present and emerging, who have been here since time immemorial.
Desert X
Desert X is produced by The Desert Biennial, a 501(c)3 charitable organization, conceived to produce recurring international contemporary art exhibitions that activate desert locations through site-specific installations by acclaimed international artists. Its guiding principles include presenting public exhibitions of art that respond meaningfully to the conditions of desert locations, the environment and the indigenous communities; promoting cultural exchange and
education programs that foster dialogue and understanding among cultures and communities about shared artistic, historical and societal issues; and providing an accessible platform for artists from around the world to address ecological, cultural, spiritual and other existential themes. Founded on the principles of the Land Art movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, when artists sought to create work outside of the confines of institutional walls, Desert X has,
since its inception in 2017, explored new configurations of site-responsive work by artists from around the world creating a new paradigm for the presentation and experience of art that is both unrivaled and accessible to all.
Desert X Artistic Director Neville Wakefield
Neville Wakefield is a writer and curator interested in exploring the ways in which art behaves outside of institutional contexts. It is his belief that where art is most successful – its most epiphanic and challenging – is not within the white spaces and clean-cut definitions that have traditionally encased it. Rather it is to be found in new territories; hybrid spaces that break free of containment to suggest new paradigms. While a senior curatorial advisor for PS1 MoMA and
curator of Frieze Projects he gained a reputation for challenging the conditions that shape art in both commercial and non-commercial contexts. He has worked extensively with institutions in the U.S. and abroad including the Schaulager Switzerland where he curated the ground-breaking Matthew Barney retrospective ‘Prayer Sheet with the Wound and the Nail’ and more recently ‘Divided Landscape’ which placed historical works from the Crystal Bridges’s collection in dialogue with contemporary visions shaped by non-settler indigenous and African American experiences. He co-founded Elevation1049, a site- specific biennial in Gstaad, Switzerland, currently in its fifth edition while maintaining his role as artistic director of Desert X in the Coachella Valley region of Southern California. Wakefield also led Desert X’s iterations in the desert of AlUla, an ancient oasis in Saudi Arabia. His interests in international cultural exchange while focusing attention on the environmental, natural, social and historical ecologies of the desert informed his recent appointment as lead curator of the Noor Riyadh Light Festival and his multiple roles on advisory boards in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Desert X 2025 Co-curator Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas
Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas is the Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, NY, where she oversees the exhibition program, curatorial initiatives, and the Socrates Annual Artist Fellowship, a longstanding program for early career artists to realize ambitious public artworks along the New York City waterfront.
Born and raised in New Mexico, her curatorial practice challenges the role of colonial narratives in shaping our understanding of land, place, and identity. For over a decade, she has dedicated herself to advocating for and realizing large-scale, site-specific installations by historically underrepresented and early career artists. Formerly, Garcia-Maestas was Acting Curator of Visual Arts at the Momentary, the contemporary satellite space of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, where she developed a robust exhibition program focused on site-specific, architectural interventions, including new commissions by Martine Gutierrez, Matthew Barney, Xaviera Simmons, Nicholas Galanin, Andrea Carlson, and Tavares Strachan. Recent exhibitions include Suchitra Mattai: We are nomads, we are dreamers (2024, Socrates Sculpture Park), Mary Mattingly: Ebb of a Spring Tide (2023, Socrates Sculpture Park), Yvette Mayorga: What a Time to Be (2022, the Momentary), and A Divided Landscape, co-curated with Neville Wakefield
(2022, the Momentary). Garcia-Maestas previously held curatorial positions at the Denver Art Museum, MCA Denver, and the Biennial of the Americas.
Press release from Desert X
Image: View of Coachella Valley,California. Photography by Lance Gerber. Image courtesy Desert X
