PALM SPRINGS, California – The odds were fully stacked against the Desert X biennial this year. Exhibits from larger, better-organized destinations have followed their plans since the pandemic struck, and even in the best of years, Desert X, which orders local-specific art in and around Palm Springs, finds it difficult to raise money to make your projects. His decision two years ago to accept funding from the Saudi Arabian government for a spinoff event prompted prominent members of the board to resign and artists to protest.
And the guest curator chosen for the 2021 edition, César García-Alvarez, fell ill with Covid-19 last year, just when he started working with artists to develop his projects. “I was very sick from mid-March to the end of May, and I still am; I am a long distance traveler from Covid, ”he said.
“It was difficult to organize a show like this during a pandemic, I think we are all very honest about it,” he added. “But it was important that we continue to do that and continue to support the artists.”
Neville Wakefield, who is Desert X’s artistic director and co-curator of its third edition, agrees. “We never thought about canceling it,” he said of the show, which opens on Friday. “Exactly the opposite. The fact that we are outdoors and free for the public has made our purpose more urgent in some ways. Although the museums in Los Angeles have been closed for a year, we feel a responsibility to do what our walled institutions have failed to achieve and nurture the need for culture ”.
The biennial is smaller than normal, presenting the work of 13 artists compared to up to 19 in previous years, with a more compact footprint. “We weren’t sure if the hotels would be open, so we organized a show that someone from Los Angeles or San Diego could run to see in one day,” said García-Alvarez. (They are installing hand hygiene stations in some works of art and “health ambassadors” in others to distribute masks and ensure social distance.)
The show features works by several international artists, including Alicja Kwade from Berlin, Serge Attukwei Clottey from Accra, Ghana; Oscar Murillo de La Paila, Colombia; Eduardo Sarabia of Guadalajara, Mexico; and Vivian Suter from Panajachel, Guatemala. Most exhibited at Sala do Erro, the non-profit exhibition space founded by García-Alvarez. His original idea was to help Desert X artists work with community organizations in Palm Springs and other cities in Coachella Valley, but Covid-19’s security protocols also scrambled those plans.
Still, most works of art are rooted in some sense of place. “The desert is not an empty void,” he said. “So, you will see the artists here responding not only to the physical landscape, but also to environmental and social issues, be it Felipe Baeza’s mural about the history of undocumented migrants and queer colored communities in the desert or the installation of Serge Attukwei Clottey dealing with with issues of access to water or Xaviera Simmons billboards showing how the desert perpetuates notions of whiteness. “
Works by Baeza, Murillo and Christopher Myers are, for different reasons, scheduled to go public after the show’s official opening, while plans for an ephemeral “smoke sculpture” by Judy Chicago are uncertain. (Since Living Desert was removed as her location, she is looking for a new location and on Friday said, “We couldn’t find one.”) Of the artworks already installed, here are five worth visiting.
Nicholas Galanin’s ‘Never Forget’
Nodding more to the story of terrorism against Native Americans than 9/11, Galanin’s “Never Forget” turns standard recognition of indigenous land rights into a monumental admission of irregularities. Close to the Palm Springs Visitor Center and the Aerial Tramway, long considered the gateway to the city, Galanin’s message is great: a 13 meter high sign that says “Indian Land” in white letters in the style of the sign Hollywood, which meant Hollywoodland when it was first erected in 1923. “The original Hollywoodland sign was an advertisement for a real estate venture to buy land only for whites,” said Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax artist who lives in Sitka, Alaska. . “This work is essentially the opposite: an appeal to landowners and others to invite them to join the landback movement.” He identified land near the sign that is for sale and started a GoFundMe campaign to try to buy it and return it to the Cahuilla people.
Kim Stringfellow’s ‘Jackrabbit Homestead’
The only Desert X artist who lives in the region, Stringfellow has thoroughly investigated with his project the history of California’s original appropriation and the legacy of the Small Tract Act of 1938, which allowed people to purchase up to five acres in the desert at a very low cost, adding a small structure. Stringfellow photographed the remains of these “hares farms” before and this time recreated, or more reimagined, one that belonged to Catherine Venn, a transplant from Los Angeles who settled in the desert in the 1940s and wrote about her adventures living among her cacti and coyote neighbors. The tiny hut has no plumbing, but some comforts: a small bed, a kitchenette, and a table with a Smith-Corona typewriter, containing an unfinished poem about the “thunderous silence” of the desert that made me wonder if the artist herself would have written it. (She didn’t know; it’s Venn.) An audio track by Stringfellow reading Venn’s diary adds to the artist’s confusion with the subject in interesting ways. There is also a suggestion of time travel, although the direction is not entirely clear. Is the artist handing over the property to us or us to the property?
‘The Wishing Well’ by Serge Attukwei Clottey
This pair of yellow-orange cubes remembers remotely a favorite of fans from the last Desert X: Sterling Ruby’s bright orange rectangular prism against desert terrain. But this was a smooth geometric shape appearing incongruously and improbably in the rugged landscape (not unlike the unidentified monolith found last year in Utah that inspired thousands of conspiracy theories), while Clottey’s humble choice of material talks about the droughts and water supply problems that threaten Southern California, as well as its homeland, Ghana. He cuts pieces of plastic from the so-called Kufuor gallons, colored containers used in Ghana to store water, and sews them with wire. He has already used this material to manufacture everything from flags to a yellow brick road. Here, the square shapes, planted on the grass outside a Palm Springs community center, evoke water tanks, and the plastic blanket below them spreads like much-needed water.
‘The Passenger’ by Eduardo Sarabia
Anyone traveling in Mexico for any length of time is sure to find petates: carpets or sleeping mattresses traditionally woven with dried strips of palm leaves. In this installation, 350 hand-made rugs – elevated from their usual use – form the walls of an open, triangular, through and labyrinth-like roof structure. Sarabia’s career begins with her birth in Los Angeles, the son of Mexican immigrant parents and, as an adult, her choice to move to Mexico. In the same spirit, your labyrinth takes you back to the center of the triangle – a meditative clearing where you can reflect on your own journey or just enjoy the view, the mountains in all directions.
Vivian Suter’s ‘Tamanrasset’
Swiss-Argentine artist who lives in Guatemala on a former coffee plantation, Suter was unable to fly for a visit to the site. Instead, she worked from photographs of local buildings, landscapes, sunsets and more, using her color palette to make a new set of abstract paintings. Now hanging behind the glass facade of a mid-century building in downtown Palm Springs, the paintings feature lemon, lime and cherry colors and shapes like bubble clusters that have a vaguely modern mid-century appearance. But the works never look complicated or design thanks to Suter’s process – painting on raw, unstretched canvas outside your home and allowing the outside to enter your work in the form of dirt stains or crumpled sheets stuck to the surface. Your dog’s muddy footprints also look friendly.