Desert X is produced by The Desert Biennial, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization founded in California, conceived to produce recurring international contemporary art exhibitions that activate desert locations through site-specific installations by acclaimed international artists. Its guiding purposes and principles include presenting public exhibitions of art that respond meaningfully to the conditions of desert locations, the environment and 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.

Desert X 2023 does not forget water. It flows with the circulation and changes of water across states, bodies, and time, celebrating the interconnectedness of life on our planet and the tenacity and imagination needed to maintain life on it across extremes.

Our structures of survival in these extremes speak not just to the physical adaptations of climate but to the social formations that give form to a world increasingly shaped by climate crisis and the political and economic migrations that follow in its wake.

The artists in the exhibition create instruments of self-awareness that make visible the forces that we exert on the world: how we design our environments, how we live, the messages we send that reinforce systems that might or might not be beneficial for us