Mysterious metallic mirrors, stacks of imported marble boulders and a 3D-printed mud hut appeared in the California desert on Saturday, as the biennial outdoor art festival Desert X returned.
The free event, which drew 600,000 visitors in its last edition, sends contemporary art lovers on a treasure hunt to find works scattered across the Coachella Valley, about 160km east of Los Angeles.
French-American artist Sarah Meyohas used intricately curved metallic mirrors to reflect and refract the bright desert sunlight, beaming the words “Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams” across the sides of a meandering 120m stucco ribbon.
Photo: AFP
“Truth is definitely something that’s at stake in today’s world,” she said. “And I try to make art that is not tricking anybody. This isn’t a trick. This is the light, and this is true.”
Using “caustic” technology based on the way light “plays at the bottom of a swimming pool” to turn sun beams into text, the work speaks to “a world in which we are so politically divided,” she said.
Thirty-two kilometers across the desert, Mexican artist Jose Davila has stacked colossal 16-tonne marble boulders that were quarried in the Chihuahuan Desert of his nearby home country.
The work is titled The Act of Being Together.
Arranged to invoke megalithic structures like Britain’s Stonehenge, the giant hewn marble lumps also speak to the “current climate of events” in which tariffs have recently been hiked at the US-Mexican border.
“Rocks like these remind us that things are here to stay, and these inconveniences come and go,” Davila said.
Desert X artistic director Neville Wakefield said that US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and Mexico’s reciprocal measures, had made organizing an art event a two-hour drive from the border “very complicated.”
The show brings artists from around the world to make installations specific to the North American desert landscape, sourcing and fabricating many materials from Mexico.
Other installations include Ronald Rael’s Adobe Oasis, which used an enormous robotic arm to 3D-print walls made of clay and straw, in the adobe style traditional in this region.
Rael said the ancient building material, which is fireproof, should be reappraised in the wake of the deadly Los Angeles fires that killed 29 people in January.
“This is mankind’s oldest building material,” modified only by “the introduction of one tool, a robot,” he said.
The fires “burned buildings that are made of plastics — toxic materials — and people in LA still can’t drink their own water,” Rael added.
Desert X runs until May 11.
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
‘DOWNSIZE’: The Trump administration has initiated sweeping cuts to US government-funded media outlets in a move critics said could undermine the US’ global influence US President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday began making deep cuts to Voice of America (VOA) and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with the organization’s director saying all VOA employees have been put on leave. On Friday night, shortly after the US Congress passed its latest funding bill, Trump directed his administration to reduce the functions of several agencies to the minimum required by law. That included the US Agency for Global Media, which houses Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. On Saturday morning, Kari Lake, a former Arizona gubernatorial and US
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
RSS