From now through march 7, 2020  desert X   AlUla  is taking place in saudi arabia.  featuring  interactive installations  by 14 artists, the site-specific art exhibition brings together a plurality of voices to speak on the environmental conditions, historic context and the surrounding communities of the ancient oasis. co-curated by saudi curators  raneem farsi  and  aya alireza  with  neville wakefield —  the artistic director of desert X — the  public exhibition  is the first of its kind in saudi arabia.
N asser alsalem  —  ‘amma qabel’  is a sculpture with both interior and exterior landscapes, which embraces the idea of time as a continuum that connects all cultures and civilizations. the simple gesture of the installation mimics a passage-way with circumference shaped by calligraphic letters that read  ‘amma qabl ’, which means ‘what precedes’.

It’s an extreme meeting of the old and new: Desert X Al Ula has opened to the public, a six-week-specific installation of artworks made in the awesome setting of the Al Ula in north western Saudi Arabia.
Desert X began as a biennial in southern California, bringing visitors through the Coachella Valley in search installations, sculptures, and performances. Now, for the Royal Commission for Al Ula (RCU)’s first major contemporary art project for the heritage site, Desert X Al Ula commissions 14 Saudi and international artists to make artworks in the sand.
“Al Ula is the power of heritage crossing through multiple civilisations,” says Amr Al Madani, chief executive of the RCU. “This is a living museum interacting with nature.”

“I wish Ed [Ruscha] could have come to AlUla, attended the show, gotten to know us and seen our work,” Muhannad Shono, one of the participating artists, told  Artnet News . “Many Saudi artists are fed up with having to deal and respond to the bad headlines. None of the western media outlets have asked me about my work. All people want to do is talk about the controversy and not the art.”
The perception, Shono continues, is that “what I am doing and what other Saudi artists are doing is part of some propaganda agenda. I am working on concepts and ideas that are in no way scrutinized or censored. I am not part of some propaganda machine. I am an individual artist that is excited to be part of all the changes happening here. We want people to come and reach out to us and see what the people are doing.”

The seventh 21,39, the Jeddah Arts Week, has opened in the Red Sea city today. Curated by Maya El Khalil and titled I Love You, Urgently, the week consists of talks and a central exhibition. It concentrates on ecology and sustainability, inspired by the work of German architect Frei Otto, who built a number of projects in Saudi Arabia.
Community and the environment permeate the exhibition’s projects. They range from an analysis of the unique ecosystem formed by the Al Manakh concrete factory outside of Riyadh, in a project by Fahad bin Naif and Alaa Tarabzouni, to interventions in Jeddah’s Al Balad, or Old Town, neighbourhood. As El Khalil noted at the press conference, Al Balad is itself a unique ecosystem, with its Unesco-protected carved wooden doors and traditional houses.

بدعم من ووزارة الثقافة السعودية، دشن المجلس الفني السعودي النسخة السابعة من معرض 21ØŒ39 فن جدة تحت عنوان “أيتها الأرض” والذي يحوي اعمالاً تتناول مواضيع الاستدامة البيئية واستكشاف طرق بديلة للتعايش والحياة على كوكبنا من خلال برنامج فني وثقافي وتعليمي يشمل معارض وورش عمل وحوارات نقاشات، وبرنامج تعليمي عام واسع النطاق.
ويضم معرض ” أيتها الأرض” الذي يقام من 28 يناير الى 18 أبريل في كل من مقر المجلس الفني السعودي والمنطقة التاريخية بجدة القديمة أعمالاً لأكثر من 60 فنان ومهندس معماري ومصمم ومفكر محلي ودولي تبحث عن التحديات الناجمة عن تدمير البيئة الطبيعية وتعتبر مبادرة هذا العام استمرارا لرسالة المجلس الفني السعودي والتي تهدف إلى تنمية مشهد الفن المحلي وبناء الجسور مع عالم الفن الدولي.
 

Working across video, painting, text and installation, Saudi artist Sarah Abu Abdullah is known for her intimate and personal reflection on what it’s like to live in the region, especially as a female artist. And for the first time ever, she’s brining her art to Dubai’s Jameel Arts Centre with her exhibition, ‘For the first time in a long time’.
A co-production between Jameel Arts Centre and the Kunstverein Hamburg, where the exhibition began in August 2019, Sarah’s work will be on show until 11 April, and combines existing video works with new commissions including a large-scale painting on textile as well as an installation of living plants.

This year, the Saudi Art Council event has been given the title “I Love You, Urgently,” as a call to action in response to the global environmental emergency. With Saudi society undergoing a rapid transformation, the council asked local and international figures from the worlds of art, architecture and design to seek tangible solutions to the crisis and come up with alternative and symbiotic ways of living on our planet.
A wide range of Saudi, Arab and European artists and creators are taking part. They include Ayman Zedani, Aziz Jamal, Cristiana De Marchi, Daniah Al-Saleh, Duran Lantink, Fahad bin Naif & Alaa Tarabzouni, Farah K. Behbehani, Filwa Nazer, Maha Nasrallah, Manal Al-Dowayan, Marwah Al-Mugait, Mohammad Al-Faraj, Mohammed Kazem, Muhannad Shono, Obadah Aljefri, Omar Abduljawad, Nasser Al-Salem, Nojoud Al-Sudairi, Raja’a Khalid, Sultan Bin Fahd and Zahrah Al-Ghamdi.

Moath Alofi (Saudi Arabia)
Born in Medina in 1984, Moath is an artist, researcher, explorer and certified tour guide of the Madina region. The Last Tashahhud is a photographic documentation capturing deserted mosques scattered along the winding roads leading to the holy city of Al Madinah Al Munawwarah.
 
Abi Green (with Sebastian Betancur-Montoya) (UK/Doha)
Abi is a still life photographer and art director based between the UK and the GCC. Born and raised in London, she graduated with a BA (Hons) in Photography from Middlesex University. Her projects carefully balance minimalism with a graphic, colourful aesthetic resulting in her unique style. 

The Al Balad residency will provide participants with open format studios and living spaces within the district. They will also have access to a library, wood workshops and innovation labs at universities and partner institutions.
Athr Gallery, one of the kingdom’s leading contemporary galleries, will operate the programme for this cycle. It has run an art residency of its own, sending Saudi artists to partners in New York, Paris, Barcelon and Beirut last year.

The Saudi Ministry of Culture has launched the pilot program of its Art Residency Initiative: Art Residency Albalad and is seeking seven participants to attend the six-week program.  The first edition of this initiative is the first of a series of fully funded residencies that will provide dedicated time, considered collaborations and a supportive working environment for creatives from all around the world. The first residents for the pilot programme will be chosen through an open call and is available to those working in cultural sectors. A selection committee made up of international and local experts will review all applications to whittle down a final shortlist of seven candidates: five artists, one writer and one curator.

The Lahore Biennale Foundation has released its list of over seventy artists who will participate in the second edition of the Lahore Biennale (LB02), “Between the Sun and the Moon,” taking place between January 26 and February 29. Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, the director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, the exhibition will focus on the Global South—“where ongoing social disaffection is being aggravated by climate change”—and will be held at various cultural and heritage sites throughout the city of Lahore, Pakistan, including the Gaddafi Stadium and the Lahore Museum.

Looking to spend a weekend in Jeddah? There’s only so much to do in a city with endless possibilities of entertainment, food, and tourism. We’ve rounded up a guide covering the best of leisure activities, so you don’t worry about FOMO.