The streets of Riyadh will be lit up from March 18, as Noor Riyadh, a first of its kind annual festival of light and art, begins. The festival will include over 60 artists from 20 countries will be exhibiting, with close to 40 percent hailing from Saudi Arabia. The Festival will run for 17 days.
The festival will also feature workshops, discussions, tours, presentations, volunteer programs, cinematic and musical events, and recreational and educational activities. The festival in Riyadh will transform Saudi Arabia into a gallery without walls. Riyadh Art is one of the four major projects under the mandate of the Royal Commission for Riyadh City, encompassing more than 1,000 public art installations across ten programs and supported by two annual festivals, one of which is Noor Riyadh.
The 2021 event is being held under the theme, Under One Sky, which, organizers say, alludes to “the universal human impulse to gather around light, to look into the flames of a campfire and to gaze at the stars”. Noor Riyadh includes over 60 artworks including large scale public installations across Riyadh, a landmark exhibition Light upon Light: Light Art since the 1960s, and a diverse program of special activities including tours, talks, workshops, family activities, film and music, many of which are available online to reach a wider audience.
Among the 63 creatives participating in Noor Riyadh are Saudi artists Ahmed Mater, Lulwah Al Homoud, Ayman Zedani, Rashed AlShashai and Maha Malluh, and international artists Daniel Buren, Carsten Holler, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Yayoi Kusama and Dan Flavin.
The installations will be set across multiple locations in Riyadh, with two main hubs, the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) and the King Abdulaziz Historical Centre (KAHC), from Thursday, March 18 to Saturday, April 3.