Far more futuristic in form yet equally timeless in concept is South Korean artist Kimsooja’s To Breathe – Coachella Valley, a spiral glass structure that visitors can walk through. Inspired by the traditional Korean fabric bundle known as bottari, a signature motif in the artist’s practice, the work is wrapped in an optical film that produces a dazzling spectrum of light and colour thanks to thousands of vertical and horizontal grooves that act as prisms. The installation itself serves to draw a line between different cultures and belief systems with the colour spectrum alluding to symbolic meanings in Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism whilst solemnly nodding to the historical roots of the Light and Space movement which fittingly originated on the US West Coast.

Reflection and refraction also underpin Sarah Meyohas’ immersive installation Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams. Paying homage to 20th-century land art, her sinuous, ribbon-like structure makes an impression even before visitors activate it by projecting sunlight onto its surface via a series of reflective discs that are meant to recall ancient sundials. Once they do, the piece comes alive with wave-like light patterns—akin to the caustics seen at the bottom of a swimming pool—inducing a longing for the desert’s ever-receding water.

Swiss artist Raphael Hefti takes a more understated approach to light. His piece, Five Things You Can’t Wear on TV, features a long, suspended ribbon of black woven polymer fibre—originally designed for lightweight fire hoses—stretched between two distant anchor points. One side of the ribbon is coated with a reflective finish, and as it flutters in the wind, light flickers along its surface, subtly destabilising visitors’ perception of space, scale and distance.

It’s not hard to imagine American artist Cannupa Hanska Luger’s nomadic caravan, G.H.O.S.T. Ride, pulling into Saar’s service station at some point during its journey across Coachella Valley over the duration of the exhibition. Combining salvaged industrial materials, ceramics, video, and sound, Luger’s mobile installation marries Mad Max aesthetics with Indigenous futurism. The result? A speculative, moving outpost that imagines communities living in harmony with nature in juxtaposition to colonial paradigms of extraction and exploitation.

Finally, Unsui (Mirror) by New York-based artist Sanford Biggers features two cloud-shaped sculptures draped in sequins, shimmering like mirages in the desert light. Drawing on Buddhist philosophy, the term unsui—“clouds and water” in Japanese—symbolises freedom, boundlessness, and interconnection. In this parched environment, however, clouds also promise water: elusive, vital, and laden with hope.