In the sun-drenched landscape of Desert Hot Springs, Los Angeles-based artist Alison Saar has created a sanctuary for weary travelers. Her installation “Soul Service Station,” part of the prestigious Desert X 2025 exhibition running through May 11, reimagines the humble gas station as a place of spiritual replenishment rather than mere vehicular refueling.
Saar’s installation draws inspiration from a sculptural intervention she created in 1986 in Roswell, New Mexico, now reimagined for the Coachella Valley desert landscape. The piece cleverly transforms the iconography of the American gas station—a symbol of mobility and consumption—into a space for reflection and healing.
Signs assembled from vehicle tires line a dusty pedestrian path leading visitors to a compact service station—a shiny tin shack nestled among trees. These signs display inspirational messages by Los Angeles-based poet Harryette Mullen, with playful phrases like “When your heart has fallen flat, we pump it up”. The journey to the station becomes a pilgrimage of sorts, preparing visitors for the spiritual nourishment awaiting them.
Inside the station, Saar has created a handcrafted sculptural assemblage containing devotional objects. At the center stands a life-size, hand-carved female figure named “Ruby,” the guardian and healer of the site. Both the figure and the shack are sheathed in sheets of old-fashioned ceiling tin, a signature material in Saar’s artistic vocabulary.
The installation exemplifies Saar’s practice, reflecting her dedication to preserving embedded histories and cultural memories, particularly those connected to Black female identity. The transformation carries an alchemical quality, turning mundane objects into extraordinary artifacts that embody renewal, resilience, and healing.
What distinguishes “Soul Service Station” is its collaborative nature. Saar worked with students from the local Coachella Valley to create foil repoussé medallions expressing prayers and wishes for healing and hope. These milagros (small devotional charms) surround the central “Ruby” figure, merging collective dreams with Saar’s vision of a spiritual oasis.
Further enriching the experience, a repurposed gas pump plays poems by Harryette Mullen, accompanied by guitar. Visitors can interact with the piece through a conch shell attached to the gas pump to hear Saar herself recite a poem. The chrome conches adorning the pump handles cleverly reference the region’s ancient history—ten million years ago, the Coachella Valley was at the bottom of a sea.
Born in 1956 to renowned artist Betye Saar and art conservator Richard Saar, Alison Saar has established herself as a formidable presence in contemporary art. Her work consistently weaves personal and cultural narratives, drawing inspiration from spiritual traditions, mythology, and African diasporic histories.
Saar’s educational background includes a dual degree in art history and fine arts from Scripps College (1978) and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design (1981). During her formative years, she worked alongside her father as a conservator, where she developed her carving skills and gained exposure to artifacts that continue to influence her material choices and techniques.
“Soul Service Station” is one of eleven installations featured in Desert X 2025, a site-specific international art exhibition taking place across the Coachella Valley. Under the guidance of Artistic Director Neville Wakefield and Co-Curator Kaitlin Garcia Maestas, this year’s iteration features works by artists from Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East.
The exhibition reflects on the desert’s deep time evolutions, reframing ideas of wilderness and exploring themes of indigenous futurism, design activism, colonial power asymmetries, and humanity’s impact on the land. As Manuel Perez, Supervisor V of Riverside County’s Fourth District, emphasized during the preview: “No matter who you are or where you live in the Coachella Valley…wherever you’re coming from, you have access”.
Saar’s “Soul Service Station” offers a tangible, physical space for reflection and renewal. It invites visitors to pause, heal, and carry forward their aspirations, histories, and voices—providing essential fuel for the soul in our fast-paced modern landscape.