AlUla Arts Festival is putting Saudi Arabia’s flourishing art scene on the international stage

If ever there was an inspiring setting for an arts festival, then this is it. Nestled within a diverse and evocative landscape of desert plains, dramatic red sandstone canyons, lush palm oases, and extraordinary wind-carved rock formations, AlUla is captivating. So it comes as no surprise that this ancient city, with its labyrinthine old town and Unesco World Heritage Site archaeological ruins, has become a focus for Saudi Arabia’s flourishing art scene.

Now in its fourth edition, AlUla Arts Festival (until 22 February 2025) has become a major attraction for art aficionados worldwide, not just for its stellar line-up of site-specific installations, exhibitions and performances, but also for a peek at what’s to come from this enigmatic destination that is transforming into a global cultural hub.

‘For thousands of years, this region has been a thriving centre of cultural exchange, where perspectives are exchanged, giving rise to new forms of creative expression,’ says Nora Aldabal, the executive director of Arts and Creative Industries at the Royal Commission for AlUla. ‘Today we are writing a new chapter of that legacy by bringing together the various pillars of our cultural ecosystem under Arts AlUla.’

The plan is to create a permanent destination for contemporary art within Wadi AlFann – which translates as ‘Valley of the Arts’ – a 65 sq km patch of desert about a 20-minute drive from AlUla’s old town. Here, amid a monumental landscape of striking rock formations, five land art pioneers – James Turrell, Manal AlDowayan, Agnes Denes, Michael Heizer, and Ahmed Mater – will be the first to reveal new permanent, large-scale commissions by the end of 2026, kicking off a continued programme of commissions, with more artists soon be announced.

‘We are very much committed to driving a project that is all about the land,’ explains Iwona Blazwick, lead curator of Wadi AlFann. ‘When we say permanent, our aim is that in hundreds of years, people can come here and witness the history of today.’

AlDowayan, for example (who represented Saudi Arabia at the 2024 Venice Biennale), held a series of workshops with over 750 members of the local community that included farmers, artisans, school children and people from the disabilities association, in which the artist asked them to draw something meaningful to them. The aim is to capture and preserve the present by creating a labyrinthine installation – called Oasis of Stories and inspired by the mud walls of AlUla’s old town – that will be inscribed with stories and pictograms from the participants.

Alula Arts Festival 2025 highlights

For now, the AlUla Arts Festival serves as a taster, providing a platform to uplift Saudi talent and, as Aldabal says, ‘aims to showcase the depth and diversity of AlUla’s cultural ecosystem’. As such, in 2025, a section of Wadi AlFann was transformed into an alluring performance space to premier Thikra: Night of Remembering, an expressive site-specific production of movement, music and design, created by choreographer Akram Khan with the costume design and visual aesthetics produced by AlDowayan.

Under a blanket of desert stars and with an original music score by composer Aditya Prakash, 14 dancers – in costumes showcasing traditional craft techniques – combined traditional Indian classical dance with contemporary rhythms in a powerful performance against Wadi AlFann’s breathtaking desert backdrop.

Elsewhere, ‘Wadi AlFann Presents James Turrell’ (on display until 19 April 2025) is an exhibition – curated by Michael Govan, CEO of Los Angeles County Museum of Art – that puts a spotlight on Turrell’s upcoming permanent work in the valley through light installations, renders, plans and a constellation map.

The AlJadidah Arts District, the historic old town of AlUla, serves as the central hub for the main festival, with a programme of workshops, classes, exhibitions, installations and live music. Highlights include a lecture performance in Cinema AlJadidah by artist and filmmaker Ayman Zedani – who presented his new research and science-fiction film commission for the contemporary art museum in AlUla – as well as ‘Raw to Revival’ (also on display until 19 April). The second joint exhibition from Design Space AlUla and Madrasat Addeera – AlUla’s first art and design centre – the multisensory experience puts a spotlight on the region’s cultural heritage and innovative design through textures, scents, sounds and visuals.

All this, alongside a calendar of activities that also emphasises initiatives such as the AlUla Arts Residencies Open Studio – as well as linking back to the community through involving locals in developing some of the commissions – is putting this historical desert town, and Saudi Arabia, on the international art map.

The AlUla Arts Festival runs until 22 February

experiencealula.com