Iridescent Installation Catches the Shifting Light of the Californian Desert

Kimsooja’s "To Breathe" installation at Desert X 2025 in California.

Installation view of “To Breathe – Coachella Valley” at this year’s Desert X exhibition. (Photo: Lance Gerber)

In Korean culture, bottaris have long served as traditional sacks, their fabric-encased bodies perfect for gathering and storing belongings. Though maybe unassuming at first, these bundles are a prominent theme throughout Kimsooja’s creative practice, whose work revolves around cultural symbolism, light, movement, and interconnectedness. The Korean artist’s newest installation is, as she says, a “bottari of light,” specially created for this year’s Desert X exhibition in California’s Coachella Valley.

Aptly titled To Breathe – Coachella Valley, the installation methodically snakes through the desert landscape, its structure almost resembling a spiralling seashell or Fibonacci sequence. Like other works by Kimsooja, To Breathe is utterly iridescent, featuring a glass surface clad in diffraction film. This specific material catches and transforms the surrounding light into a spectrum of color, one that constantly shifts as the sun inches across the sky. At times an intense pink, other times a hypnotic green, To Breathe evokes a mirage, its hazy outline shimmering on the desert horizon.

For Kimsooja, the diffraction film also imparts a texture similar to that of textiles: “The film acts as a transparent textile, featuring thousands of vertical and horizontal scratch lines akin to warp and weft, and envelops the architecture in light.”

It’s clear that To Breathe relies upon reflection, whether it be literally through its glimmering surface, or figuratively, by mirroring existing images like a bottari, textile pattern, or mirage. This “mirror” theme also extends to Kimsooja’s complementary installation of the same name, currently located in the desert of AlUla, Saudi Arabia. Despite being over 8,000 miles away, the AlUla sculpture still calls to mind its Californian counterpart, creating a direct link that stretches between two deserts.

“Audiences partake in a contemplative performance by walking through and gazing at the shifting light spectrums that render visible the vibrations of colors normally invisible to the naked eyes,” Desert X organizers explain.

It’s a sentiment that Kimsooja herself echoes. To weave through the installation is to “walk in and out of a contained yet open spiral path that unfolds as an abstract ‘lightscape.’” To Breathe is, the artist concludes, at once a “drawing, a painting, and a sculpture.”

To learn more about the artist, visit Kimsooja’s website. More information about To Breathe can be found on the Desert X website.

For this year’s Desert X exhibition in California’s Coachella Valley, Korean artist Kimsooja created To Breathe.

Installation view of “To Breathe – Coachella Valley” at this year’s Desert X exhibition. (Photo: Lance Gerber)

Composed of glass, the installation is clad in diffraction film, which effectively captures and transforms the surrounding light into a spectrum of colors that shifts depending on the time of day.

Installation view of “To Breathe – Coachella Valley” at this year’s Desert X exhibition. (Photo: Lance Gerber)

Kimsooja’s "To Breathe" installation at Desert X 2025 in California.

Installation view of “To Breathe – Coachella Valley” at this year’s Desert X exhibition. (Photo: Lance Gerber)

To Breathe is a poignant meditation on how ephemeral and dynamic light can be, and reflects Kimsooja’s fascination with mirrors, reflection, and movement.

Installation view of “To Breathe – Coachella Valley” at this year’s Desert X exhibition. (Photo: Lance Gerber)

Kimsooja’s "To Breathe" installation at Desert X 2025 in California.

Iridescent Installation Catches the Shifting Light of the Californian Desert