Respite
A wood room on the desert floor captures the symphonies created by the desert’s most prodigious carver – the wind.
“During my time living in the Morongo Basin (the Joshua Tree area for those not from around here) I have found that this desert holds significance for many as a place of refuge and transformation. It is often said that this desert acts as a magnifying glass, helping those who are sensitive to its calling, dig deep and see within themselves, helping them give over to its healing nature. It is a place to escape, a place to hide, a place to reckon with your inner self, the harshness of nature’s fist beckoning you to be present within yourself at every moment.
Respite was built as a sanctuary within the desert floor, calling attention to the beauty and majesty of this precious environment. It is the second piece in a series of works within the landscape of Wonder Valley, honoring the desert as sacred space. Reminiscent of the Zen concept of the Dewy Path where sequential spaces serve as a “means of spiritual preparation”, these works use the landscape and our relationship to sound and inner silence as a passageway to connecting to the numinous or transcendent.”
—Kate Short
HDTS 2022
Curated by Iwona Blazwick OBE, Director of Whitechapel Gallery, London
9 new site-specific works in Pioneertown, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree and Wonder Valley. Artists include Dineo Seshee Bopape, Alice Channer, Gerald Clarke, Erkan Ozgen, Jack Pierson, Dana Sherwood, Kate Lee Short, Paloma Varga Weisz, and Rachel Whiteread
April 9 — May 29, 2022
HDTS 2022 emerges from a heavy felt shift in both culture-at-large and our local desert communities. Its title The Searchers shines light on the “regenerative ruin,” a concept that follows 21st century human intervention in our desert region. As a historically nomadic environment, the desert has played host to waves of different existences—transitory settlements, sanctuaries, and living experiments. This particular desert, at the bottom of the dense Mojave, occupies a fringe space between the western apexes of Los Angeles and Las Vegas where these experiments flourish. Its uniqueness lies in the many ungoverned moments, layered visions, and transposed uses of space that comprise a landscape full of attempted solutions to the basic question of “How to live?”
HDTS 2022 also included ephemeral programs at our community partner sites including the Sky Village Swap Meet in Yucca Valley and The Palms in Wonder Valley. Documentation of these programs can be found here.
