Artists Seek Meaning in the Desert
PALM SPRINGS, California — Roaming off-road through sandy, rock- studded terrain in view of mountain peaks and windmill farms, a six-wheeled rover about the size of a milk crate backed up and sped away from its creator.
With infrared detectors to elude heat- producing objects and other sensors to identify solid forms, the bot is in effect programmed to avoid human interaction. She’s known as a “shy bot.”
“She doesn’t have consciousness in the classical way, but she is sensitive,” said the Italian artist behind the bot who, seeking to avoid celebrity himself, goes by the name Norma Jeane. “She does not want to be bothered.”
The shy bot is one of 16 art projects spread across the Palm Springs area from Desert Hot Springs to Coachella as part of the sprawling new exhibition “Desert X,” running through April 30. The bot is also one of several artworks in the show that play with fantasies of the desert as a great existential escape: a refuge for anyone (or anything) seeking to shed the straitjacket of civilization, to vanish from sight or just be left alone under the purportedly sheltering sky.
Another disappearing act includes “Monument,” a nuclear bunker by Will Boone buried in the sand that holds a sculpture of John F. Kennedy inside. (All works are free to the public, but some have limited hours.)
“The mythology is the desert is a place to go to find yourself, but in order to do so, you have to lose yourself,” said Neville Wakefield, the New York curator who directed this show. “It’s about letting everything go in order to find something.”
Of the 16 artists in “Desert X,” there are only four women — “and too many machos,” Norma Jeane offered when explaining the female gender he assigned to his bot. Asked about the imbalance, Mr. Wakefield said, “I’m not a quota curator.”
As it turns out, the work made by women in Desert X proved less spectacle- driven and more contemplative. A sound installation by Lita Albuquerque centers on a blue female sculpture with her ear to the ground.
The work of Claudia Comte of Switzerland, a wall three meters high and 30 meters long at the base of hiking trails in Palm Desert, might at a distance seem a critique of President Donald J. Trump’s plans for reinforcing the border. But up close, it’s clear that the art- work is a painting as much as a wall, covered with repeating black S-patterns that gradually sharpen into zigzags as you walk along it. The wall appears to bulge in spots because of the curves, an optical effect that nods to Op Art painting as well as to heat haze, the shimmering visual distortion that can occur in the desert.
At another trailhead farther west, near the base of the Whitewater Preserve, the Los Angeles- based Sherin Guirguis has built a domed, earthen sculpture like the pigeon towers popular in Egypt, where she grew up. The towers are typically used to breed the birds for food or sport (and, rarely, for espionage missions). Her sculpture has niches for birds, but she doesn’t expect any to use it; she wants viewers to wonder about its significance.
“I hear people say the desert is a blank canvas,” she said. “Actually, it’s full of life and full of histories; we just don’t value them enough. I wanted to reach into the history of these desert communities that are often marginalized.”
An existential backdrop for a sprawling exhibit.