AlUla’s Cultural Renaissance: A Vision Unfolding
Since the launch of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Vision 2030 in 2017, the historically rich desert oasis of AlUla has rapidly emerged as a pivotal cultural destination. Nestled amidst breathtaking wind-sculpted limestone cliffs and lush date-palm groves, AlUla’s past is a tapestry woven with tales of ancient incense traders and Muslim pilgrims. Its 900-year-old adobe settlement and the iconic 2100-year-old Hegra tombs, built by the same civilizations as Petra, stand as silent witnesses to millennia of human ingenuity.
While perhaps not as overtly futuristic as other Vision 2030 megaprojects, AlUla’s multifaceted development is a significant achievement in its own right, poised to serve as a blueprint for cultural regeneration across the kingdom and beyond. The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), operating under the ‘Arts AlUla’ banner for its creative endeavors, meticulously balances cultural preservation, ecological restoration, and the cultivation of new artistic expressions.
Global Collaboration: The Heart of AlUla’s Artistic Ambition
A cornerstone of AlUla’s artistic strategy is its commitment to international collaboration and knowledge exchange. Hamad Alhomiedan, RCU’s arts and creative industries director, emphasizes this global outlook: “It’s very much about transferring knowledge but also showcasing what we have here and the unique ways we’re accomplishing our goals. Everything we do should be accessible, not just across the kingdom or the region, but globally. We’re here to regenerate the area and that requires a lot of work. It’s essential to have help from a diverse group of cultural platforms and independent talents, even scientists. We’re developing a new playbook so to speak.”
Beyond the charm of newly established artisanal workshops, the AlUla Artist Residency program stands out for its impressive international scope and experimental foundation. Deeply rooted in the region’s rich cultural and ecological heritage, yet universal in its proposed applications, this program fosters groundbreaking creative research.
The 2025 Design Residency: Crafting with Context
The 2025 edition of the residency, focused on design, brought five emerging to mid-career practices from Saudi Arabia, Côte d’Ivoire, Tunisia, Belgium, and the Netherlands to AlUla for an intensive three-month period. These contemporary studios, all driven by speculative and craft-led ethos, delved into thorough ethnographic and material research. Their resulting designs are profound distillations of local daily life, emergent industrial developments, and the ingenious harnessing of AlUla’s abundant natural resources.
Curator Dominique Petite-Frère, founder of the multivalent exhibition platform and creative incubator Limbo Accra, played a crucial role in ensuring these concepts materialized beyond the theoretical. Each proposal culminated in tangible furnishings, many with the potential for immediate integration into the local context.
- Aseel Alamoudi’s Playful Benches: Riyadh-based designer Aseel Alamoudi, inspired by the intricate limestone rock faces and children’s interaction with public spaces, created 3D-printed, extruded sand benches. These non-prescriptive public structures are designed to be climbed, hinting at Alamoudi’s grander vision of a massive playscape on the desert floor.
- Ori Orisun Merhav’s Palm Leaf Innovations: Brussels-based Ori Orisun Merhav ingeniously reinterpreted the age-old tradition of harvesting palm leaves. By combining them with the hardening properties of shellac, Merhav developed a new formal vocabulary for naturalistic lamps, carpets, and stools.
- Paul Moustapha Ledron’s Ceremonial Forms:
Palm as a material was also central to Abidjan-based Paul Moustapha Ledron’s collection. His almost ancient architectonic daybed, incense altar, and a palm tree-like floor lamp (Tamaro Jar) evoke ceremonial and spiritual qualities, designed to facilitate a “slowing down” and full immersion in the environment.
Villa Hegra and Desert X AlUla: Expanding the Artistic Horizon
These five collections, unveiled as part of the AlUla Arts Festival, were complemented by new design concepts from the French Ministry of Culture’s Villa Hegra complimentary residency program. Managed by AFALULA (French agency for development in AlUla), this downtown institute hosted French designer Paul Emilieu Marchesseau. For the repurposed estate’s five studio spaces, Marchesseau conceived a series of modular furniture pieces, meticulously crafted from locally sourced natural and industrial materials. His propositions, such as a curtain-enclosed lamp, beautifully blend function with poetry, incorporating traditional local ornamentation as a grounding element. This collection is both aesthetically and practically site-responsive, with a universal potential for application.
Also on view was the fourth biennial installment of Desert X AlUla, the renowned offshoot of California’s outdoor installation art exhibit. Like the other showcases, these significantly larger works are deeply responsive to their unique desert context. “AlUla’s landscape is a living archive of stories, traditions and encounters that span ce
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