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kimsooja brings glass installation at desert x in coachella valley
For Desert X 2025, Kimsooja transforms the vast expanse of Coachella Valley into a luminous mirage with To Breathe, an iridescent glass installation that interacts with the landscape. Located along Pierson Boulevard in Desert Hot Springs, the work is wrapped in a diffraction film that refracts natural light into a shifting spectrum of colors, immersing visitors in an ephemeral experience of light, air, and space.
Expanding on the artist’s exploration of bottari—traditional Korean fabric bundles used for carrying belongings—the spiraling piece also forms a connection with AlUla, Saudi Arabia, where another of her light-based works is located (find designboom’s previous coverage here), uniting the two arid regions.
Desert X 2025 installation view of Kimsooja, To Breathe – Coachella Valley | all images by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X
to breathe connects landscapes through iridescent light
Throughout her multidisciplinary practice, conceptual artist Kimsooja examines themes of movement, materiality, and interconnectedness. The transparent, textile-like film covering To Breathe features a grid of vertical and horizontal scratch lines, akin to warp and weft, which dissolve the boundaries between structure and environment. As the desert sun moves across the sky, the installation becomes a living canvas, continuously transforming in response to shifting light.
The work also forms a conceptual bridge between two distant landscapes: the Californian desert and AlUla, Saudi Arabia, where another of Kimsooja’s light-based installations is situated. This dialogue between sites reflects her ongoing engagement with the universality of natural elements—air, light, and land—while subtly referencing the Light and Space movement’s historical roots in the American West. Infused with philosophies from Chinese Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, the piece incorporates an East Asian perspective into the lineage of site-specific light-based art.
Kimsooja transforms the vast expanse of Coachella Valley into a luminous mirage
‘To Breathe’ is an iridescent glass installation that interacts with the landscape
the work is wrapped in a diffraction film that refracts natural light into a shifting spectrum of colors
immersing visitors in an ephemeral experience of light, air, and space
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