kapwani kiwanga builds a shelter of patterned shadows for desert X

plotting rest: the illusion of protection in the desert

Artist Kapwani Kiwanga presents Plotting Rest, installed at Desert X 2025 in California’s Coachella Valley, as both an architectural echo and an historic whisper. Set against the jagged mountains north of the Palm Springs Visitor Center at Tramway Road, the sculpture gestures toward shelter without ever quite providing it. A geometric canopy of interlocking triangles floats overhead. It forms a porous roof that offers no escape from the sunlight, wind, and dust, but instead opens viewers up to them while casting shifting shadows on the desert floor below. It’s a structure that speaks of Palm Springs’ iconic modernism and its promises of protection, yet delivers only the illusion of safety.

In this minimalist pavilion, Kapwani Kiwanga weaves the legacy of the Underground Railroad into the fabric of Desert X. The roof pattern, drawn from the ‘flying geese’ quilting motif, transforms into a cipher of survival. Historically, these quilts served as covert navigation tools — hung from porches and lines, their patterns silently signaling safe passage north for enslaved people seeking freedom. In this context, Kiwanga’s sculpture is a rest stop in a speculative journey, a place to pause and reflect amidst the harsh and historically fraught landscape. Desert X 2025 will be on view in the Coachella Valley until May 11th, 2025 — see designboom’s coverage here.

images © Lance Gerber

kapwani kiwanga critiques midcentury desert architecture

Kapwani Kiwanga’s work for Desert X 2025 is built on the push and pull between endurance and fragility. Columns made from imported stone and local palm fronds support the overhead lattice, emphasizing contrasts — what is transported and what is native, what stands firm and what yields. The piece offers a counterpoint to the polished optimism of midcentury desert architecture, revealing the darker subtext of exclusion that accompanied its aesthetics. Beneath the clean lines and open spaces were legal and social structures that barred access to safety and ownership for many. Kiwanga’s sculpture surfaces this complexity with quiet power.

With Plotting Rest, the artist contributes to Desert X’s ongoing interrogation of land, time, and migration. Her work reminds visitors that the desert has always been a place of movement — for pioneers, migrants, and those forced to flee. While Manifest Destiny expanded the nation westward, others were moving northward under duress, chasing an uncertain freedom. Kiwanga’s sculpture captures this tension: the dream of a better life etched into a place where shelter is both symbol and mirage.

Kapwani Kiwanga’s Plotting Rest is installed in the desert north of Palm Springs for Desert X 2025

the Landscape of Desert X 2025

Kapwani Kiwanga’s installation is one of eleven new commissions in Desert X 2025, a biennial that turns the vast and remote landscape into a sprawling exhibition of site-responsive public art. Other notable works include To Breathe — Coachella Valley by Kimsooja, which uses light and diffraction to explore invisibility and perception, and Adobe Oasis by Ronald Rael, a speculative habitat that merges ancestral building methods with environmental resilience. Together, these pieces introduce a dialogue with the desert’s past and future, reflecting themes of Indigenous futurism, climate resistance, and the porous boundaries between the built and natural world.

the open lattice roof references Palm Springs design while offering no real shelter