Following a successful first outing last year, the Noor Riyadh festival comes back for a second iteration. There’s more of the same dazzling light-based artworks we’ve come to expect from Noor Riyadh, except it has tripled in size with more than 120 installations by 100 artists from 40 countries, on view in 40 locations across the city. While Noor Riyadh only runs until November 19, it is accompanied by a 3-month exhibition running until February 4th and a robust public program of events.
Noor Riyadh is one of the most ambitious festivals of its kind anywhere in the world, transforming the city into an all-encompassing art gallery and aims to bring together local communities, artists, families, students and international visitors. This year’s festival is taking place under the banner theme “We Dream of New Horizon,” with the intention of fostering a sense of hopefulness about the future and overall positivity and optimism.
The installations are awe-inspiring and the sheer scale and breadth of the festival is dizzying–including everything from building projects to drone shows. The festival is co-curated by Hervé Mikaeloff, Dorothy Di Stefano and Jumana Ghouth. Amongst the dozens of artworks are sculptural work by Jean-Michel Othoniel and a series of lightboxes that relay the theme of this year’s festival by Zineb Sedira. Top flight talent such as teamLab, Daniel Buren, Douglas Gordon and Alicja Kwade are joined by Saudi talent including Muhannad Shono, Ayman Zedani, Sarah Brahim and Ahaad Alamoudi. The diverse forms of light art on show include immersive site-specific installations, monumental public artworks, ephemeral sculptures, art trails and virtual reality.
The longer-running exhibition that accompanies Noor Riyadh ‘From Spark to Spirit’, running until early February at JAX 03 (JAX District) traces the role light plays in shaping our relationship to a world for which light itself has become the signal of change, exploring themes such as the ‘Technologies of Light’, ‘Architectonics of Light’ and ‘Consciousness of Light’.
Noor Riyadh is the first of the Riyadh Art programs, kicking off an initiative to make the city “a gallery without walls.” The overall program project involves 10 programs, delivering more than 1,000 public art installations across the city created by local and international artists
Esquire Picks
Muhannad Shono
Shono is a leading Saudi visual artist who represented the Kingdom at the Venice Art Biennale. His multidisciplinary practice is focussed on storytelling and harnesses the power of narrative by “creating and contesting personal, collective, and historical truths.” For Noor Riyadh 2022 Shono presents a newly commissioned artwork responding to the Festival’s theme ‘We Dream of New Horizons’. A Story of Light uses natural light with visitors following a singular beam of light that has found itself lost inside an abandoned building. Trapped inside the shadows of a forgotten architectural landmark in Riyadh the beams search for a way out and back to the light.
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Born in 1977 in Madagascar, Andrianomearisoa is an artist living and working between Paris, Magnat-l’Etrange and Antananarivo. His mixed-media approach encompasses sculpture, installation, craft, textile, written word and collaboration. It is informed by the artist’s Madagascan roots, itself a country of diverse cultural influences. His delicate and ambiguous pieces are imbued with complex emotional experiences. In On a Never Ending Horizon A Future Nostalgia To Keep The Present Alive, he uses neon and metal, presenting light as a vital necessity to dream about other worlds and other times. With this installation the audience is invited to question its time, its horizon, its emotion and its desires.