Kumkum Fernando: The Messengers at Coachella

By Valerie Milano, The Hollywood Times

Indio, CA (The Hollywood Times) 4/19/23 – Among the beautifully stunning art installations at the 2023 Coachella festival, the tallest and most prominent piece by far is a collection of 3 sculptures entitled The Messengers conceptualized and created by the talented Kumkum Fernando.

With a height that ranges between 65-75 feet tall, The Messengers stretch to the heavens and have been a pleasantly striking and powerful addition to the landscape of the eclectic concert. When chatting with THT, Kumkum describes the planning stages of bringing the vision of The Messengers to life. He recalls, “We worked with Paul Tollett directly–Coachella has a badass production team that did an awesome job. So, they did the fabrication part of the piece, and I did the 3D rendering and selected the colors. Because I was not on site, I didn’t really see the artwork until a week before the festival, so I worked online with the art department and that is how it worked. I’ve never worked like that before, because I am really hands-on with my work. At some points, I was nervous because I have never done work like this before- working from a distance, but Paul just did an awesome job and I’m really happy with it.”

The Messengers represent something extremely personal to the artist. Kumkum reveals, “The Messenger in the center, the tallest one, is named after my son. My son lives away from me in Germany while I live in Vietnam. I had done a similar model before, and it was called Ilo the Dreamer. For Coachella, I wanted to bring back that model and revisit that because it means a lot to me because it is my son. In this case, I wanted to give [the Messenger] a jet pack that symbolically means that my son can come to me whenever he wants. It is also dedicated to those people that cannot be with us at this very moment; it was kind of dedicated to love.”

Originally featured in The Hollywood Times