Amabelle Aguiluz // changes III is a fiber installation made of discarded materials from a previous work. The installation continues the cycle of creation and deconstruction, deconstructing old patterns to create new threads that take the shape of a circular form. The installation interprets Aterittorial by reconnecting to the self, others, and our surroundings. The artist calls this installation “a way to connect to mother nature, creative energy, and the womb space.” Los Angeles-based Aguiluz is a Filipina American multidisciplinary artist, weaver, and teacher. Her work is deeply connected to the body, nature, and the healing power of plant medicines. She uses both traditional and unconventional textile techniques to transform organic, recycled, or found materials into sculptures, weavings, and site-specific installations. Her work has been exhibited widely, and she received the Fiber Art Now Public Installation grant for a sculpture presented at the Tucson Botanical Gardens in 2020.
Artist website: www.amabelleaguiluz.com

Claudia Bucher // Rock Paper Sisyphess Lizard Spock takes its inspiration from the hand game Rock Paper Scissors and the Greek myths of Sisyphus and the Hydra of Lerna. Rock Paper Scissors is a zero-sum game that has three possible outcomes: a draw, a win or a loss. Two software engineers’ expansion of the game included lizard and Spock, greatly increasing its complexity. Territorial positions are immutable in this seemingly innocent game. In Claudia Bucher’s installation-performance, where Sisyphess replaces scissors, these rigid partisan factions are re-imagined as components of a micro ecosystem requiring cooperation, not competition. The parts must each do their share: they must function cooperatively in a state of symbiosis. Claudia Bucher is a Yucca Valley-based conceptual artist known for her performative sculptural installation projects. Her work has been exhibited at a variety of Southern California art spaces and institutions. She is currently transforming a high desert property into a climate crisis sanctuary.
Artist website: www.instagram.com/clauditopia

Emily Endo // Sculptor Emily Endo uses organic materials of contrasting hardnesses, textures, and chemical compositions to compliment and contrast one another in harmonious tension. Here Endo employs large hollow cast glass forms based on fossils, geology, and ancient sea life. These reference metamorphosis, the passage of time, and reaction to environmental change. Furthering the theme of aterritoriality, Endo describes this work as “an investigation of the shifting and porous borders between landscape and time,” noting that the California desert was underwater 280 million years ago. A current resident of Yucca Valley, Endo is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships and has also lectured at Otis College of Art and Design, Rhode Island School of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, and many other venues. Their work has been shown in galleries across the country.
Artist website: www.emilyendo.com

Pierre Fichefeux // The son of a theologian, Hawaii-based French artist Pierre Fichefeux roots his work in philosophy and cosmology, seeking order in the chaotic forces of nature. In his Boston Dynamics series, he portrays a fictional world where enormous robot-like creatures roam the earth, seemingly godly in nature. Their existence is ambiguous, set either far in the past, perhaps 30,000 years ago, or in a distant future like the year 4057. Unlike animals or humans, who may display territorial behaviors leading to conflicts and destruction, robots lack such instincts or the need for personal space. This aterritorial nature of robots offers advantages, as it allows them to be adaptable, flexible, and capable of operating in diverse environments without territorial boundaries or conflicts. In certain instances, robots can even provide us valuable insights into our own behaviors. Pierre’s work has been exhibited in galleries throughout Europe, Asia and the US.
Artist website: www.pierfichefeux.com

Gustavo Godoy // Staring at Stars: Sacred Site for Looking by Gustavo Godoy is inspired in part by El Caracol, the Mayan astronomical observatory at Chichen Itza, built over a millennium ago. The installation merges art, science, and mythology, employing sculptures strategically placed in the desert landscape, creating a trail or a circuit for viewers to follow and explore. Visitors are encouraged to interact with the installation, exploring their own stories and mythologies. The unique features of the landscape–rock formations, yucca and Joshua trees, animal trails–complete the aesthetic and conceptual aspects of the work. A California native, Godoy lives in Los Angeles where he is Chair of the Visual Art department at Harvard-Westlake School. His work has been shown in major art galleries and museums around the world, and has been written about in publications such as Frieze, Art in America, Art Review, Vogue, and the LA Times.
Artist website: www.godoystudiola.com

Vinhay Keo // Born in Cambodia and is currently based in Los Angeles, Vinhay Keo employs photography, installation, sculpture, performance, and writing as strategies to explore the persistent hauntings of violence. Freedoms Yet to Come (A Kite Song) is based on a popular Khmer legend about the folk hero Thnon Chhay. Imprisoned by the Chinese king, Thnon Chhay built a kite using the hair of his fellow prisoners as strings, producing a “song” which drove the king to free him. The traditional Khmer Kleng Ek (Singing Kite) is believed to represent freedom and peace. Vinhay Keo’s kite is constructed of both handmade and mass produced materials, alluding to both a cultural tradition and globalization/colonialism. Vinhay earned an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. His work has been shown in venues across the United States as well as Berlin and Singapore.
Artist website: www.vinhaykeo.com

Constance Old // desert plastic riff. Born in Philadelphia PA, Old is an eco-artist who has made work related to consumption and the environment for the past 25 years. For the 2023 Treenial she has designed a billboard addressing plastic pollution in the desert. Plastic pollution is truly Aterritorial – it turns up universally, even in our bodies. The billboard is installed on the south side of Hwy 62 heading toward Yucca Valley from BoxoPROJECTS. A zine/meditation on plastic, the environment, and our collective future accompanies the installation and is available at BOXO. Old received an MFA from Yale University in Graphic Design. Her practice integrates design, sculpture, craft, and environmental activism. Most recently she made an installation called “Extraction,” at New Bedford Whaling National Park in Massachusetts, using 300 pounds of plastic fishing rope extracted from abandoned lobster traps.
Artist website: www.constanceold.com

Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs // Through an interdisciplinary practice that incorporates sound, sculpture, scent, and collective performance, artist/composer Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs creates new myths and their paraphernalia: hymns, relics, costume, instruments, rites and rituals for an alternate past, and still-possible future. Riggs is the creator of the site-responsive performance ensemble, Song of Eurydice and leads Community Chorus, an experimental, drop-in chorus. She has presented work at museums and biennials/triennials across the US and her work has been featured in X-TRA, New York Times Magazine, Artforum, Rookie, and NYLON. Using the lens of a geologic time scale (“deep time”), Distance Duet considers the intersecting griefs of climate emergency, isolation, and division, as catalysts for transformation and connection. In the piece, multiple narratives occur simultaneously, overlap and interleave spatially and sonically. Presented at The Integratron, Sunday, November 12, 2023, 6:30pm, 7:45pm, Click HERE for ticketing.
Artist website: www.carolynpennypackerriggs.com

LJ Roberts // As a queer person growing up, traveling by car presented an escape from an environment that was inhospitable to difference for LJ Roberts. Today, travel as a gender non-conforming person presents both freedom and danger. Over the past decade, LJ has amassed an archive of images that depict queer objects, structures, text, and landscapes across the US and internationally. They look for queerness that is subtly gestured or quietly expressed, as well as overt queerness. A horizon is unreachable in perpetuity.  In this image, LJ had pulled off onto the side of the road to let the dogs pee and stretch their legs.  Two giant tires cast shadows on their tiny bodies.  LJ lifted them out of the shadows, onto the giant pieces of rubber and they became the horizon. LJ received the White House Champions of Change Award for LGBTQI+ artists in 2015. Their work has been exhibited and acquired by museums across the US.
Artists website: www.ljroberts.net

Sunny Samuel // With a background in biology Sunny Samuel’s work uses transparency and translucency as both medium and substrate to reflect on the ways that we remember time, light, and space. Circle/Object frames the landscape through its shape, but the circle does not contain the land; the transparent/translucent material allows us to see through, around, and into the work, activating both the viewer’s and artist’s lens as we look to the horizon. The work begins as a fixed vantage but invites us to wander tangible and intangible territories, dissolving borders external and internal, uniting landscape and memory, reminding us that the boulders and cacti we gaze upon become part of our collections and recollections, never simply framing our view but inhabiting our minds. Samuel is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA, received his MFA from the University of California Santa Barbara and has exhibited across the US.
Artists website: sunny-samuel.squarespace.com

Chris Sanchez // The multiplicity of signs and billboards used to sell us messages and merchandise form an ironic inspiration for Chris Sanchez’s installation. Repurposing several elements from previous castings, Chris presents a work that references symbols from other times and cultures, pointing to a greater understanding of ancestral heritage, time and space. Chris’s latest series of work combines hybrid elements of painting, sculpture, digital art, light and video to explore the infinite potential of constant shifting variables of composition and light. His work concentrates on site-specific interventions in the California desert where he grew up, and references his Mexican heritage’s visual language to transform structures and environments into ephemeral experiences. He has work currently on exhibition at the Palm Springs Art Museum.
Artist website: www.instagram.com/kasinfinite

Stephanie Cheng Smith // As a composer, performer and programmer, Stephanie Cheng Smith creates interactive pieces, installations, and improvisations frequently performs electronic music under the name Stephie’s Castle, and is a member of several experimental music ensembles in the Los Angeles area, including bitpanic, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Ensemble Uhhhhhmm. Her performance for the Treenial utilizes the unique acoustics of the Integratron in nearby Landers, a domed structure built in the 1950s by aerospace engineer and UFO enthusiast George Van Tassel. The performance consists of several different autonomous acoustic-mechanical groups placed evenly in the space. Each group generates their own patterns and timbres while Smith interacts with each, experimenting with different pattern overlays and timbral changes by changing electronic parameters and acoustic materials in real time. As a performer and improviser, Stephanie will be searching for a combined sound that represents an arc of wholeness. Presented at The Integratron, Sunday, November 12, 2023, 6:30pm, 7:45pm, Click HERE for ticketing.
Artist website: music.stephiescastle.com

Jacobine van der Meer // While the Mojave Desert’s ubiquitous creosote plant (Larrea tridentata) is able to reproduce sexually its asexual reproduction – by cloning – is far more successful. Inspired by the 11,700 year old clonal colony called King Clone in Johnson Valley, Jacobine van der Meer’s work Queen Clone starts with a large standing sculpture which functions as the positive embodiment of the Original Ancestor, merging male and female forms. From this sculpture van der Meer has made a mold in multiple sections (the negative) and produced two (positive) casts, the Clones. These accompany the original mold at BOXO, while the sculpture remains in the studio. By using positive and negative space, male and female forms, and the concepts of survival and perpetuity, the work is a monument for the future. A resident of Landers, CA, Jacobine’s work has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. Jacobine will also offer a closing performance Sunday, November 19, 2023, 4pm @ BoxoPROJECTS
Artist website: www.instagram.com/jacobinevandermeer

Jinny Yu // Building upon her prior examination of the history and dynamics surrounding the complicity of old and new settlers in colonialism, Jinny Yu’s new work explores the inherent tension between the figure and the ground, serving as a metaphorical representation of the complex dynamics of hosthood and guesthood. Yu interrogates the binarity of hosthood and guesthood and proposes a relationship that complicates the expected binary opposition by exploring the possibilities of expanding their positionality and relationship. Born in Seoul in 1976, Jinny Yu is currently based on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinàbe Nation and Berlin. A recipient of multiple awards, Yu is a Professor of painting at the University of Ottawa. Her forthcoming solo exhibition is at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto in 2024.
Artist website: www.jinnyyu.com