Imagine this: you’re an artist who has been asked to display your work outdoors in one of the ancient wonders of the world. Say, Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Or Machu Picchu in Peru. Daunting? That’s a good word to describe the task facing 15 international artists when they were asked to unveil their work at AlUla.
Never heard of it? You’re not alone. But while even the most widely travelled of us might struggle to place it on a map, archaeologists certainly speak of AlUla in the same breath as other ancient sites listed above. The city, in north-west Saudi Arabia, was settled by people from at least three ancient kingdoms: the Lihyanites, the Babylonians and the Nabateans. Each left its legacy in the form of tombs, houses, inscriptions and monuments, preserved by the desert air, creating an extraordinary outdoor museum.
Today these ancient treasures have some more modern companions in the form of eye-catching site-specific sculptures. Visitors to the city will find, alongside the tombs, a dry waterfall sewn together from African water bottles; a 2 metre-high mirrored origami star; a giant piece of coral and an underground solar-powered greenhouse. Just some of the works from the group of artists who have been invited to use this desert setting as a blank canvas for the Desert X AlUla biennial.
This high-profile outdoor art show, which started and runs in alternate years in California’s Coachella Valley, was attracted to AlUla by its incredible geological and archeological setting.
“It was pretty overwhelming when I first set foot in the canyons,” says Londoner Shezad Dawood, one of the group. “I felt humbled by the scale and impact of the landscape. You could clearly see the effect of water on the cliffs and rock faces dating back hundreds of millions of years.”
His work, Coral Alchemy, resembles a giant piece of ocean coral, referencing the deep history of the area, which was on the shores of the Red Sea 10-12 million years ago. It sits incongruously, yet beautifully, in these craggy canyons — an object at once both ancient and obviously modern.
Shadia Alem - Desert X AlUla Artist
Every artist tells different stories, says Palestinian artist Dana Awartani. “Some are historical, some look into biology, some literature, but all are inspired by the landscape.” Her own work, a concave geographic sculpture, draws on the “melting pot” of influences on the local culture as well as the shapes of surrounding rock formations.
“With the artist, [working in the desert] is like giving them the whole space to work with; no boundaries... in the sense of what can be achieved.”
For another of the artists, Shadia Alem, Desert X AlUla was a return home. Now based in Paris, she was born in Mecca about 450 miles south in Saudi Arabia. Her work, I Have Seen Thousands of Stars and One Fell in AlUla, is a reflective abstract sculpture: part-organic, part-origami.
Her inspiration came from the presence of old scriptures inscribed on the rocks around AlUla. “If you are not told, you would not see them, but they are an old testimony of human presence, of an attempt of leaving a footprint,” she says.
These artists are certainly not the first to exhibit their work in this breathtaking location. Since the opening up of Saudi Arabia to tourism in 2019, those charged with sharing AlUla with the world want it to be more than just a museum. A living place that both preserves traditional craftsmanship for future generations and also draws on these influences to create a place of contemporary artistic innovation.
In the 21st century, the Middle East has become a centre of arts, investing in some of the world’s biggest mega-museums and galleries such as the Louvre and Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi. Until recently there was one exception: the region’s largest country, Saudi Arabia, which in preceding decades had taken a highly conservative view both to its home-grown artists and exhibiting work from overseas.
In the past decade however, the cultural landscape has begun to change rapidly. Works by Henry Moore, Joan Miro and Alexander Calder, exhibited at the Jeddah Sculpture Park in the 1970s, have been restored to their former glory. And the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale is taking place in Riyadh right now.
Nora AlDabal - AlUla’s director of arts and culture programming
Desert X AlUla and AlUla’s growing number of other exhibitions are the most ambitious signs yet that Saudi Arabia wants to be a significant presence in the art world. But this is not, in art critic Robert Hughes’ celebrated phrase, “the shock of the new”. The creative minds behind AlUla see their work as continuing an artistic legacy that stretches back hundreds, even thousands, of years.
“AlUla has long been a hub of arts and creativity,” says Nora AlDabal, AlUla’s director of arts and culture programming. “It’s been a place of passage, a crossroads for trade and a home to successive peoples who carved, sculpted and inscribed the art of their time, literally using the landscape as their canvas”.
This well ensures that there is always plenty going on in AlUla, even outside of Desert X AlUla’s high-profile visits every two years. Right now, for example, visitors can stroll in the palm grove of Mabiti AlUla hotel, enjoying the The Oasis Reborn exhibition, the product of an 11-day AlUla artist residency programme planned to be the first of many.
At Maraya hall, there’s What Lies Within, an exhibition of Saudi art from the past two decades from the private collection of female patron and collector Basma Al Sulaiman. It includes Shadia Alem’s arresting piece The Black Arch from the 2011 Venice Biennale, and the I Am series by photographer Manal AlDowayan, which challenges the way Saudi women are portrayed.
The city now has its own cultural district: AlJadidah, in AlUla’s reborn old town. There you’ll find the Cortona on the Move for AlUla photography festival (until October). Also street art created by Saudi graffiti artists — no longer a surprising thing to encounter in modern Saudi Arabia. AlJadidah’s Art Square is currently home to Athr Gallery, and a Design Gallery will open soon.
Across AlUla, 2022 will see a packed programme of events and beyond, including AlUla Moments, which promises “an unmissable choice of music, art, heritage, adventure, culture and food”. Experiential dining from Bompas and Parr invites people to eat dinner cooked on molten lava. Local safaris take 4x4 tours to see ibex and oryx. There’s also hot air ballooning, a wellness festival, and ‒ of course ‒ the ancient tombs that made AlUla the first UNESCO-awarded site in Saudi Arabia.
And although the Desert X AlUla biennale will finish at the end of the month, some of its installations will remain. Lita Albuquerque’s sculpture from the inaugural Desert X AlUla show, NAJMA (She Placed One Thousand Suns Over the Transparent Overlays of Space) has found a permanent home in the hills above the Habitas resort. This blue-clad, 25th-century female astronaut has become an unofficial symbol of AlUla’s journey through time and space.
A local AlUla woman learns traditional crafts at the Madrasat AdDeera
Shadia Alem’s The Black Arch, 2011, at the What Lies Within exhibition
Rashed AlShashai's Thuraya, 2022, part of the Oasis Reborn exhibition
On this Sacred Day, 2022, by Mohannad Shonno, also part of Oasis Reborn
The Maraya Hall is the world’s largest mirrored building
Installation view of What Lies Within: Rashed AlShashai, Brand 2, 2019; and Musaed AlHulis, Holy-Wood, 2014
Photography from the Cortona on the Move exhibition in AlJadidah
Cortona on the Move, AlJadidah
Saudi art collector Basma Sulaiman and exhibition curator Luwah AlHomoud in conversation
Lita Albuquerque's NAJMA (She Placed One Thousand Suns On The Transparent Overlays Of Space), Desert X AlUla 2020, photo by Lance Gerber
Images and artworks courtesy of the artists and Experience AlUla
Plus, AlUla is central to an ambitious plan to foster a new generation of local people who will have a career in the arts — not just as artists, musicians and craftspeople but also administrators, curators and promoters.
At the heart of this ambition is Madrasat AdDeera. This former school for girls near AlUla Old Town has been reborn as a workshop where local artisans have been trained in ceramics, palm weaving, textiles and jewellery-making. The project is being nurtured by The Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts — that’s our own Prince of Wales, whose Turquoise Mountain specialises in reinvigorating traditional crafts.
Already 50 classes have been offered to locals, and tourists will get the chance to join in, too, reflecting a wish by organisers to get visitors out of their resorts and to experience local community life.
“We have an unparalleled opportunity to develop sectors, including crafts, that talk to AlUla’s spirit,” AlDabal says. “That’s exactly what Madrasat AdDeera has started... It’s a great example of how all these efforts come together to create not just a destination, but a living, breathing celebration of inheritance and contemporary activity with plentiful opportunities for our community.”
Alicia Keys - American singer, songwriter and actress
Among the Madrasat’s VIP visitors in February was the singer Alicia Keys, who gave an impromptu performance as the school’s female students — some in traditional abayas, some not — filmed the occasion on their mobile phones. The YouTube footage is one of those small landmarks in the emergence of a new Saudi Arabian cultural life.
Alicia Keys, the tenor Andrea Bocelli, and Lionel Richie have all talked about the impact that visiting and performing here has had on them. On his second visit, Richie described it as a "magical experience"; on his third, Bocelli said it was an “educational experience for me to find myself in this idyllic and peaceful place away from the world”.
Other big names are starting to make an appearance here too - and not just in arts and culture. This year London's own celebrity chef, Jason Atherton, opened a restaurant atop the 9000-mirrored Maraya Hall.
“AlUla really impressed me,” he said at the opening. “The beauty of the Ashar Valley, the native produce and the iconic Maraya architecture are all the ingredients we need for...a destination dining experience. I jumped at the chance to be one of the first permanent fine-dining venues in AlUla.”
The opening of his restaurant is surely just one landmark moment in the progress of this exciting destination, which is well on track to becoming a place that, pretty soon, we will all have heard of.
For more on arts and culture in AlUla, or to plan a visit, go to experiencealula.com
