Coachella’s maze and starry eyes

Coachella’s 2026 art program turned the festival grounds into walk-through light sculptures, led by Sabine Marcelis’s “Maze” and Kyriakos Chatziparaskevas’s “Starry Eyes.” (coachella.com) (archinect.com) The festival is running across two weekends, April 10 to 12 and April 17 to 19, 2026, at the Empire Polo Field in Indio, California. This year’s art program was organized by Public Art Company founder Raffi Lehrer with Goldenvoice art director Paul Clemente. (artsy.net) (archinect.com) Marcelis’s “Maze” is built from inflated curved PVC forms arranged in a color gradient from pale yellow to deep red. Coachella says the piece offers shaded paths by day, and design coverage says the structure glows from within after dark. (archinect.com) (dezeen.com) “Starry Eyes” takes its shape from the golden barrel cactus, with interlocking towers that Coachella says rise to almost 40 feet. The structures have star-shaped openings at the top, creating shade in the daytime and a lantern effect at dusk. (coachella.com) (archinect.com) The 2026 brief centered on “luminance, transparency, and lightness of form,” according to Archinect’s report on the program. Lehrer said in a Coachella statement, published by Artsy, that the works were designed to be entered, sat beneath, and wandered through. (archinect.com) (artsy.net) That focus marks how Coachella uses art on the grounds: not as a separate exhibition hall, but as public space for tens of thousands of festivalgoers moving between stages. Coachella describes the commissions as landmarks, icons, and places to view from multiple perspectives across the field. (coachella.com) The program extends beyond those two headliners. The Los Angeles Design Group’s “Visage Brut,” developed with Stud-IO Construction, adds a modular steel tower, while Are You Mad and Jeanne Harignordoquy installed eight oversized kites called “Desert Drifters.” (archinect.com) (coachella.com) Coachella and its art partners have also pushed some festival pieces into longer public lives after the music ends. Artsy reported that several earlier installations have been placed in nearby communities, including Stephanie Lin’s 2025 work “Taffy,” which is slated for Palm Desert Park later in 2026. (artsy.net) For 2026, the clearest image is simple: a maze that changes with the sun and cactus-like towers that frame the sky. On a festival field built for movement, Coachella’s biggest art pieces this year were also places to stop. (dezeen.com) (coachella.com)