Desert X Announces Artists for 2023 as Exhibition Returns to Coachella Valley

The series of art installations will focus on the issue of climate change.

Alex Galbraith Arts & Entertainment

Ghanaian artist Serge Attukwei Clottey’s installation from Desert X 2021 in Palm Springs.
PHOTO BY LANCE GERBER, COURTESY DESERT X

Desert X has announced its artist lineup for 2023.

The biennial arts fest that stages site-specific installations from international artists is returning to the Coachella Valley for the fourth time. This year’s festival will focus on the coming climate crisis, where and how humanity has built in the past, and how they’ll continue to in the future.

“From deserts to floodplains, finding, building and developing tools and tactics to shelter our minds and bodies from the harshness of the world outside are essential to survival,” explained fesitival co-curator Diana Campbell. “In a time of global crisis, many of the artists have created spaces of freedom and possibility, suggesting new ways to build healing cultures of care that embrace and protect (bio)diversity, opening up opportunities for joy and hope anchored in justice.”

To that end, Campbell worked with fest artistic director Neville Wakefield to bring together 11 artists from across North America, Europe, and Asia. Exhibitions will combine sculpture, musical performance, painting, poetry, and other mediums to comment on the coming climate-addled future, plus the past and present that led to it.

In the organizers’ own words, Desert X hopes its new installations will “make visible ... the forces that we exert on the world: how we design our environments, how we live, and the messages we send that reinforce systems that might or might not be beneficial for us.”

The festival will run from March 4 to May 7 with all of the outdoor exhibits being free and open to the public. Presentations and artist-led events will be peppered throughout the event’s multi-month run. For more information about the specifics of each installation, keep an eye on Desert X’s official website. For now, take a look at the participating artists below.

Participating artists:
  • Rana Begum, Bangladeshi artist based in London
  • Lauren Bon, Los Angeles–based artist
  • Gerald Clarke, Cahuilla artist based in California
  • Paloma Contreras Lomas, Mexico City–based artist
  • Torkwase Dyson, American artist from New York
  • Mario García Torres, Mexico City–based artist
  • Hylozoic/Desires, pair of artists based in London/Delhi
  • Matt Johnson, Los Angeles–based artist
  • Tschabalala Self, New York–based artist
  • Marina Tabassum, Dhaka–based artist
  • Héctor Zamora, Mexico City–based artist