Huge hippos at Coachella
One of Coachella’s most photographed new pieces is “Network Operations,” a more‑than‑60‑foot installation that stages oversized hippos moving through a fictional corporate environment — it’s already a crowd magnet on opening day. (KESQ reported the sculpture’s scale and messaging; the LA Times framed this and other large works as part of Coachella’s long visual tradition). (kesq.com) (latimes.com).
The strangest office at Coachella this year is staffed by giant hippos, and by Friday, April 10, festivalgoers were already stopping near the main stage to photograph it instead of hurrying to a set. The installation is called “Network Operations,” and KESQ reported that it rises more than 60 feet. (kesq.com) The joke is not just “big animals in the desert.” The hippos are shown running a fictional media company, so the piece turns a corporate office, a newsroom, and a control room into one giant sight gag. (kesq.com) The artists built it to feel slightly disorienting on purpose. KESQ said the team described the work as a fake international headquarters meant to mirror how modern media systems can feel tangled, overwhelming, and hard to read from the outside. (kesq.com) That hippo world is not new at Coachella. The festival’s art page says Dedo Vabo, the partnership of Derek Doublin and Vanessa Bonet, has been evolving the same “Hippo Empire” story since “Power Station” in 2013, “Corporate Headquarters” in 2015, and “Hazardous Interstellar Planetary Operations” in 2019. (coachella.com) So “Network Operations” lands less like a random sculpture and more like the next season of a long-running absurdist office saga. Earlier versions put the hippos in a power plant, then an office tower, then a 75-foot rocket mission, and now they have apparently moved into media. (coachella.com) (dedovabo.com) That continuity is part of why people keep recognizing the work from across the grounds. Dedo Vabo’s 2015 “Corporate Headquarters” was a three-story mock office building, and one project page says it used 80 actors in suits and hippo masks to make the whole thing feel like a functioning company. (paulclemente.com) Coachella has trained its audience to treat art pieces like landmarks, not side decor. The festival says its curators commission large-scale works to function as public space and icons on the Empire Polo Field, and the Los Angeles Times framed the 2026 lineup as part of a 25-year tradition of giant visual interventions shaping how the festival is remembered. (coachella.com) (latimes.com) This year’s hippos also fit the opening-day rhythm of Coachella exactly. Before many people know the set times by heart, they know where the huge thing is, and a 60-foot fake media empire full of oversized animals is easier to spot in a crowd than a small gallery wall. (kesq.com) (coachella.com) KESQ said the structure took months of planning and includes internal elements that are not visible from the outside, with artists hinting that more interactive or unexpected details may show up over the weekend. So the people taking a quick photo on Friday may end up coming back later to see what the hippos are actually doing inside their empire. (kesq.com)
