With the parched desert landscape of Southern California as its canvas, Desert X inherits the outré artistic traditions of Coachella‘s annual festival in April — not to mention the statement-making sculpture of Marfa, Texas, and the grandiose gestures of Burning Man. Yet, it probably shares more with the legacy of site-specific landscape art pioneered by Richard Serra and the environmentally charged works of Richard Long.

Currently in its fifth incarnation, the free two-month exhibition showcases its site-specific installations in isolation, each so connected to the environment that one could hardly exist without the other. The works, curated by Desert X artistic director Neville Wakefield and co-curator Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, have been installed at locations across California’s Coachella Valley, some many miles from the next-nearest piece. It requires intention and stamina to view all 13 installations. To help visitors string together multiple viewings, Desert X has brought together a roster of contemporary art- and design-focused partner hotels, including the Palm Springs boutique hotel Drift and Acres Landing in Desert Hot Springs.

In programming this current chapter, Wakefield and Garcia-Maestas invited artists from Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas to contemplate and reframe established ideas around the American desert and the impact of humans on its future. Ideas included colonial power asymmetries, the future of Indigenous life and the role of emerging technologies in wilderness and contemporary society.

‘The land of Desert X is no longer the mythical and endless expanses of the American West but has come to include the effects of our ever-growing human presence,’ says Wakefield. ‘Artists continue to be inspired by the idea of unadulterated nature, but in its search they have also come to recognize that… the realities of the world we live in now are both more complex and contested. Time, light and space permeate every aspect of this work but so too does an urgency to find new sustainable approaches to living in an increasingly imperiled world.’

Works by artists including Jose Dávila, Sanford Biggers and Agnes Denes (who installed her Living Pyramid early at the Sunnylands Center & Gardens in Rancho Mirage) use grand architectural gestures to ‘activate’ the landscape and illustrate concepts of shelter, climate, displacement and freedom. They both learn from the landscape and impose upon it. Abstract work from Swiss artist Raphael Hefti and French-American artist Sarah Meyohas play with our perception of light, space and resources to disorienting and emotional effect.

Many of these look past ephemeral band-aid solutions for our current crises, hinting at new approaches and the potential of new generations. But as the art itself is ephemeral, in situ only through 11 May, the hints will remain just that.

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