In photos: California’s youth squaring up to an uncertain future

Six months into 2025, California has become the living embodiment of the Imperial Boomerang. Just this April, the Golden State surpassed Japan to become the fourth largest economy in the world, trailing only the United States, China, and Germany for world dominance. Yet the income inequality is striking, with the wealthiest 10% earning over 11 times that of the poorest – $336,000 (£250,000) vs. $30,000 (£22,000), respectively – while the unhoused population hit a record high in 2024, with 187,000 people left to fend for themselves. 

The year began as the Southern California wildfires raged for 24 days, with 14 separate fires killing at least 30 people, displaced 200,000 more, and destroyed 18,000 homes and buildings across 233 sq km (90 sq miles). More recently, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have been deployed across the region, tripling its arrests in just one year to 23,564 in May 2025 alone, while police in riot gear continued their assault on pro-Palestine student protests. 

“At a moment when everything feels so uncertain, when we all feel desperate and scared, the opportunity to forge connections and share experiences with one other is paramount,” says Courtenay Finn, Chief Curator at the Orange County Museum of Art. Finn did just this, teaming up with co-curators Christopher Y. Lew and Lauren Leving to create California Biennial 2025: Desperate, Scared, But Social, a love letter to a new generation of Californians coming of age today. 

• Read next: Los Angeles is burning: Rick Castro on fleeing his home once again

Desperate, Scared, But Social brings together the work of 11 artists including Deanna Templeton, Miranda July, Brontez Purnell, Seth Bogart, the Linda Lindas, and Emily’s Sassy Lime, the OC garage punk band whose 1995 album gave its title to this edition of the Biennial. Three decades later, their riff on a casual discussion from The Breakfast Club has become a call to community in an increasingly fragmented world.

As early members of the riot grrrl movement, Emily Ryan and sisters Wendy and Amy Yao came together as Emily’s Sassy Lime in 1993. Hailing from Asian immigrant families who did not understand their connection to the scene, the teens were forced to improvise, finding creative ways to link up. 

“The band members snuck out to perform and went on tour without their parents knowing – they thought they were at each other’s house and the library,” Finn says. ​“They did not live close to each other, own their own cars, or even their own instruments, so they would practice over the phone, leaving ideas and songs on each other’s answering machines. At their concerts, they would borrow the instruments of the bands they played with, often switching who plays what on stage.” 

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That DIY spirit can be felt throughout Desperate, Scared, But Social, notably in the large-scale installation of portraits from Orange County native Deanna Templeton’s ongoing series, What She Said, which opens the show. The work, which began in 2000, looks at teen girls in a way that they are rarely shown: as strong, vulnerable, rebellious, and self-aware, like the artist herself. ​“They were either me when I was their age, or what I wished I could have been – beautiful, strong, independent, bad-asses,” Templeton shared with Finn. 

It’s a sentiment that can be felt throughout, and a reminder that self-liberation is an inside job. 

“The Biennial was built on the ethos that all good things are worth doing together,” says Finn. ​“In a world in which we experience everything on a screen, the act of making an exhibition in space is a radical act of resistance.” 

• Read next: Coming of age in New York’s ​’70s punk heyday

California Biennial 2025: Desperate, Scared, But Social is on view through January 4, 2026, at the Orange County Museum of Art in Costa Mesa, CA.

Miss Rosen is a free­lance arts and pho­tog­ra­phy writer, fol­low her on X.

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