AlUla Arts Festival celebrates the history of the ancient oasis city with an eye towards the future

Now it its fourth year, the annual event is bringing together works by Saudi and international artists

Saudi artist Sarah Brahim and French artist Ugo Schiavi are presenting a minimalist glass temple installation at Wadi AlNaam. Photo: The Royal Commission for AlUla

Every artwork and exhibition within the AlUla Arts Festival has a material or conceptual connection to the historic landscape.

Running until February 22, the festival brings together works by Saudi and international artists that have been developed as a direct result of engaging with AlUla’s urban and natural environments. These include performances that question why the eagles of the Hegra tombs are missing their heads, musical installations that employ organic materials from the surrounding desert, as well as exhibitions that draw from decades of archaeological research in AlUla.

The works, as such, are inextricable from their setting – a characteristic that few other arts festivals can claim.

Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui led the opening performance of the festival, collaborating with French percussionist Toma Gouband as well as music students from AlUla. Photo: The Royal Commission for AlUla

However, AlUla Arts Festival was not merely devised as a platform to reflect upon the city and its history. A long-term plan is in the works to enhance daily life in AlUla by bolstering its creative economy. The history of the oasis city is a potent aspect of the festival, but its future is what the event is working towards.

“We basically use the festival as a platform to showcase all the work that goes around the year to develop our assets,” says Nora Aldabal, executive director of Arts and Creative Industries at The Royal Commission for AlUla. “It's really about focusing on our key cultural assets.”

These include Wadi AlFann and AlJadidah Arts District, as well as the coming contemporary art museum. “The residencies, research, commissions, exhibitions and programming are all outcomes of year long of programs to develop these assets,” Aldabal says.

This long-term ambition is particularly evident in Wadi AlFann, which translates to Valley of the Arts. When completed, the 65 square kilometre site will feature monumental pieces of land art that will transform a sprawling desert patch into a global cultural attraction. Five artists have been commissioned to develop site-specific works, including Manal AlDowayan, Agnes Denes, Michael Heizer, Ahmed Mater and James Turrell.

Wadi AlFann presents James Turrell features several light works by the US artist that underscore his mastery of the intangible medium. Photo: The Royal Commission for AlUla

“Land art has a very specific place in the way that you enhance your understanding and appreciation of your environment and the things around you,” says Juhi Raipancholia, projects lead of the Art in the Landscape department at RCU. “Our artists are making us think about the things around us, the spaces around us.

As a whole, the RCU’s Art in the Landscape department is aimed at commissioning works that are “in dialogue with the history, landscape and communities of AlUla,” Raipancholia says. “We work on initiatives such as Desert X AlUla and Wadi AlFann’s preening programme, which aim engage our local communities and uninitiated audiences to come experience what concepts and artistic practices in dialogue with the heritage and landscape of AlUla could look like.”

The Oasis of Stories project by AlDowayan was showcased in an exhibition at last year’s AlUla Arts Festival, serving as a glimpse of the maze-like installation that takes cues from the city’s old town with walls that are inscribed with stories from the local community. This year, the event is spotlighting the project developed by Turrell.

The American artist is known as being one of the Light and Space movement, famous for his light-based works that challenge the nature of perception. For Wadi AlFann, Turrell has conceived a colossal project that is the result of decades of research into light and its capacity to reveal and manipulative perception – or as the artist often calls “the thingness of light".

“Turrell has been instrumental in connecting the celestial with the terrestrial,” Raipancholia says. His Wadi AlFann project neatly embodies that practice. The site features a space fitted with a sundial that, during the night, will reflect the starry skies of the desert. Another area will incorporate a lensless telescope, where “you can see with your naked eye, during the winter solstice, the sun and moon reflected on the white marble floor,” Raipancholia says.

Other areas, dubbed Sky Spaces, will use light projections to manipulate the perception of the sky, imbuing the overhead scene with vibrant colours. The project also includes lodges, as well as pathways that go around the site.

The ongoing exhibition, Wadi AlFann presents James Turrell, which runs until April 19, delves into the project while also showing works that has earned the artist the moniker “the master of light". Curated by guest curator Michael Govan, chief executive of Los Angeles County Museum, the show features light art installations across two locations in AlJadidah Arts District that provide insight into how Turrell evokes sensory experiences using nothing but light.

Maha Malluh will be among the artists featured in the forthcoming contemporary art museum in AlUla. Photo: The Royal Commission for AlUla

Saudi artist Sarah Brahim and French artist Ugo Schiavi are presenting an installation that is currently taking audiences to AlUla's desert, specifically to Wadi AlNaam. The glass temple is inspired by the shapes of local stones and is conceived as a place of reflection within the majestic desert landscape. The work comes as a component of Neuma - The Forgotten Ceremony, an indoor exhibition by the two artists at Dar Tantora that features blown-glass sculptures.

Maha Malluh, meanwhile, also tackles the subject of visual perception in her outdoor exhibition Reminiscence. The Saudi artist explores the intersection of philosophy, psychology and art through mixed media installations and photograms that build upon personal and cultural symbols. Malluh’s works explore threads between personal and collective memory. She will be among the artists featured in the coming contemporary art museum in AlUla.

AlUla Arts Festival is also hosting several other performances and exhibitions, all of which respond to the AlUla’s landscape and history. Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui is reimagining AlWarsha as a Bayt Al Hams, The Whispering House, fitting the exhibition space with his unique, automated sound devices, some of which were crafted using materials from AlUla. Atoui also led the opening performance of the festival, collaborating with French percussionist Toma Gouband, as well as music students from AlUla.

AlDowayan, along with English dancer and choreographer Akram Khan, will also be presenting Thikra: Night of Remembering, between January 25 and 27. The performance will be held with Wadi AlFann’s desert as a backdrop. Fourteen international dancers, dressed in costumes designed by AlDowayan, will be performing to original music by Aditya Prakash.

Tarek Atoui's performance with French percussionist Toma Gouband, as well as students from music schools in AlUla kicked off the city's annual arts festival. Razmig Bedirian / The National

In To The Eagles, Saudi artist Ayman Zedani will deliver a lecture informed by three years of research into AlUla’s history.

“For the past few years, I've been fortunate to conduct artistic research in the Northwest region of the Arabian Peninsula,” Zedani says. “With support from entities such as the RCU and Neom, I was given access to ongoing and fascinating discoveries related to ancient civilization, as well as ecological insights from the region diverse landscapes. I've spent my time trying to learn and understand the history of the land and of the ancestors that have inhabited it for thousands of years.”

Zedani says the performance will reflect on his own journey of discovery – delving into AlUla’s history, not as an archaeologist, but as an artist and storyteller. In that way, he takes liberties and flights of imagination to investigate questions that historians still do not have a concrete answer for, such as – why are the eagles displayed on top of the tomb’s entrances missing their heads?

“We don't really have a clear answer,” Zedani says. “It started bringing about ideas that maybe these are not just heads of eagles. Maybe they're keys that turns the tombs into portals to different dimensions. I’m trying to weave these fragments of information into something coherent.”

AlUla Arts Festival also has exhibitions that honour local handicrafts and traditions. These include Design Space AlUla’s second collaboration with the Madrasat Addeera, once a historic girls school into a thriving arts and design centre. The exhibition, Raw to Revival, presents contemporary reimagining of ancient palm weaving and natural dyeing techniques, to create everything from handbags to couches and room dividers. The exhibition can be seen a symbolic representation of AlUla Arts Festival’s aim of honouring history and tradition with an eye towards the next step.