The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has debuted four anchoring art installations as part of its 2023 program. According to the organizers, the newly-commissioned sculptures by Kumkum Fernando, Vincent Leroy, Güvenç Özel, and Maggie West seek to bring “color, light, and alternate perspectives to the charged atmosphere” and act as “fresh, colorful, and architecture beacons that transform the iconic Coachella landscape and various times of day and night.”

Kumkum Fernando’s The Messengers comprises three monolithic figures that appear as giant robots or action figures when viewed from afar. The Sri Lankan artist drew inspiration from the vivid colors of South Asian art and architecture, particularly Tibetan and Hindu temples, as well as folk tales of gods and demons. The resulting figures, standing between 65 and 80 feet, each stand on plinths with a base of steps for visitors to gather.

Molecular Cloud by French artist Vincent Leroy imagines molecular clouds in the form of light, glossy, inflatable objects floating above the festival field. As one moves closer to the artwork, the ground, people, and sky appear in the installation’s reflective surfaces in what the organizers call a “phantasmagorical spectacle that plays with your perception and detaches you from reality.”

LA-based artist and architect Güvenç Özel created Holoflux as a 60-foot-tall “hypermedia object” with flickering lights, projections, graphics, and changing color schemes. At night, the reflective surfaces of the sculpture’s spherical forms become pulsating light features while projections of real-time video shows the festival in action. “I consider myself a cyber-physical architect and a critical technologist,” Özel said about the scheme. “Cyber-physical, meaning the work covers cyberspace and physical environments and the interaction between the two.”

Meanwhile, fellow LA-based artist Maggie West has created what the organizers call “one of the world’s largest 3D photography installations,” which sees the artist’s floral photographs reproduced on 20 steel structures. Titled Eden, the installation stands between 6 and 56 feet tall, displaying a variety of plant photography in warm and cool tones. The high-resolution images appear on vinyl sheets and come alive at night with mapped projections onto the sculptures that create a vibrant light show.

Other structures featured during Coachella’s 2023 edition include the Warrior One stage by LA-based creative team Do LaB, whose scheme is grounded in notions of “human connection, authenticity, and environmental sustainability.” Meanwhile, grassroots arts and culture nonprofit Raices Cultura recruited and mentored 20 youth from the East Valley cities of Coachella, Indio, Mecca, Thermal, and La Quinta, who built an art installation for the festival campground based on their “shared approach to theme and aesthetics.”

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 takes place on two consecutive weekends: Friday, April 14 - Sunday, April 16, and Friday, April 21 - Sunday, April 23.