Since our inception in 2015, the Biennale has grown from a small 24-hour happening into a full-scale seasonal engagement and global collective. Though the Biennale has evolved in numerous ways, our principles remain the same, the final and perhaps most important being: The Biennale is not a spectator sport. Participation is required.
In 2025, members of BBB launched the Bombay Beach Institute for Industrial Espionage & Post-Apocalyptic Studies, a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to sustaining the cultural, educational, and ecological work born in Bombay Beach. As of 2026, the Institute now serves as the official fiscal sponsor of the Bombay Beach Biennale, ensuring that every donation is fully tax-deductible while providing the organizational backbone for our year-round community programs, youth initiatives, and large-scale artistic experiments. ​
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Each year, we have thousands of people attend the Biennale at no cost to them. If 2,500 of you contribute $100, our overhead costs would be entirely covered. If you can’t donate yourself, please share this ask through your own networks and help us spread the word. Your contribution, no matter what form it takes, will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the Bombay Beach Biennale. ​​
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The People’s Biennale
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The Biennale has always existed outside of the commercial art world. It belongs not only to our international community, but to the people of the Salton Sea, the Imperial Valley, and the Coachella Valley—communities too often dismissed as poor, rural, and forgotten. Imperial County is the poorest in California, yet it is the site of one of the richest imaginations in America.
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Through our first-ever public grant program in 2024, nearly every award went to local and underrepresented artists. They staged the region’s first LGBTQIA+ drag show. They created couture fashion out of trash found along the poisoned shoreline. They gave voice to the contamination of our water, to the reality that art here is never separate from survival. The Bombay Beach Biennale facilitates the creation of over 150 artists, technologists, and philosophers. Each year, we host an academic philosophy conference, film festival, circus, opera, ballet, jazz club, alongside a myriad of multi-media installations, gallery shows, and performances.
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Everything we do at the Biennale is free and open to the public, which is why we need your support.
We raise money so that children of this community can see themselves as artists, so that neighbors can witness their lives transformed into theater, and so that the desert can remind the world that creativity is oxygen.