Kimsooja, To Breathe – AlUla, Desert X AlUla 2024. All photos by Lance Gerber, courtesy of The Royal Commission for AlUla.

Landscape, Art – Under the theme In the presence of absence, Desert X Alula 2024 – the visionary landscape art project in the ancient desert region in north-west Saudi Arabia – responds to a mysterious question: what cannot be seen? Often dismissed as spaces of emptiness, deserts are rendered mute and static, but there is much more than meets the eye.

• RELATED STORIES: Find out more about Desert X on Archipanic.

Faisal Samra, The Dot.

Fifteen lansdcape architects and artists created distinctive works that emerge from the local context exploring ideas of the unseen and the inexpressible. All the creatives selected for this year’s open-air art exhibition visited the AlUla desert and spent time in its landscape; their proposals developed from such experience. Here are the ones we liked the most.

Sara Alissa and Nojoud Alsudairi, Invisible Possibilities_ When the Earth Began to Look at Itself.

Desert X AlUla is curated by Maya El Khalil and Marcello Dantas, with artistic direction from Raneem Farsi and Neville Wakefield. Building on the legacy of Desert X, which takes place in California’s Coachella Valley, Desert X AlUla draws on principles of land art, offering a profound opportunity to experience art on a monumental scale in dialogue with Saudi nature.

Rana Haddad and Pascal Hachem, Reveries.

Ayman Yossri Daydban draws the contours of a football pitch with white stones and rocks gathered by the AlUla community from across the valley. Placed in a remote, rocky area, the football field is a mysterious and suspicious presence, provoking collective memory and considering the social role of football.

Ayman Yossri Daydban, A rock garden in the shape of a full-sized soccer field.

Faisal Samra shows how the Wadi AlFann valley originated from an ancient crack, revealing the small forces that shape grandeur over epochs. The illusion of time is symbolized by a line composed of rock fragments.

Faisal Samra, The Dot.

Inspired by pre-Islamic beliefs of jinn inhabiting the desert, Filwa Nazer’s elevated walkway of Preserving Shadows is structured using steel mesh to form a massive, undulating black snake.

Filwa Nazer, Preserving Shadows.

Drawing on AlUla’s legacy on the Incense Route, Karola Braga uses scent to recreate the sensory world of ancient trade. Her structure, Sfumato, engulfs participants in hazy frankincense and myrrh, inviting visitors to reconnect with the olfactory heritage of the route in a unique and immersive encounter.

Karola Braga, Sfumato.

As we enter the cylindrical form of Kimsooja’s work, between iridescent walls, visitors are drawn in and out to the center of a spiral. The chromatic walls of To Breathe – AlUla distils light that has travelled aeons into prisms that dance across the visitor and the landscape.

Kimsooja, To Breathe.

Rana Haddad and Pascal Hachem’s installation focuses on honouring the traditional crafts of the region, creating a refuge made from rammed earth jars. Dubbed Reveries, each jar in the tower bears geometric cuts, allowing nature and light to shift and cast ever-evolving patterns within.

Rana Haddad and Pascal Hachem, Reveries.

Sara Alissa and Nojoud Alsudairi turn the landscape into a self-reflective arrangement in Invisible Possibilities: When the Earth Began to Look at Itself. Through different viewpoints and approaches, the work aims to reshape viewers’ understanding of the site’s ecological transition and its physical geographies.

Sara Alissa and Nojoud Alsudairi, Invisible Possibilities_ When the Earth Began to Look at Itself.

Desert X AlUla 2024: all photos by Lance Gerber, courtesy of The Royal Commission for AlUla.

Karola Braga, Sfumato, Desert X AlUla 2024, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of The Royal Commission for AlUla.