![]() The cherished natural landscape was the most important consideration when building Maraya, the world’s largest mirrored building, in the beautiful Ashar Valley. Their work is also sold in shops and boutiques in AlUla Old Town. Today the area’s skilled artisans, mostly women, are frequently commissioned by local hotels and restaurants. These craft skills began millennia ago when early inhabitants hand-collected clay in the desert and used local plants to make the pigment for textiles and decorating. Formerly a disused girls’ school, the centre found new life when it was repurposed as a space for teaching pottery, carving, weaving and jewellery-making. Weekly workshops: Madrasat Addeera teaches both local women and newcomers about traditional craftingĪn increased international awareness of AlUla’s art and heritage has enriched its creativity and fostered an ecosystem that supports local artisans, many of whom have honed their craft in adult learning centres such as Madrasat AdDeera. The Desert X AlUla exhibition was dispersed through one of AlUla’s canyons with some of the artworks now acquired permanently to be appreciated by visitors all year round. In 2022, artists and sculptors included Jim Denevan, Monika Sosnowska, Zeinab AlHashemi and Serge Attukwei Clottey who explored the notions of mirage (sarab) and oasis. This recurring, site-responsive, open-air art exhibition is a partnership with Desert X in Coachella, California, and this will be its third edition. ![]() Its passages will be inscribed with personal histories and folklore gathered by AlDowayan from people in AlUla.Ģ024 also sees the return of Desert X AlUla as part of the annual AlUla Arts Festival. She draws inspiration from the mud walls of AlUla’s Old Town and ancient spaces of Arabic settlements in the architectonic sculpture, which viewers will be invited to lose themselves in. Her era-defining commission for Wadi AlFann, due for completion in 2026, will be a labyrinthine installation, known as Oasis of Stories. Visitors to AlUla can get a taste of what is to come at Wadi AlFann as AlDowayan is opening an exhibition during AlUla Arts Festival in February 2024, showcasing her participatory work that captures stories from AlUla’s communities. The first five artworks will be unveiled by 2026 – by Saudi Arabian artists Manal AlDowayan and Ahmed Mater, and US-based artists Agnes Denes, Michael Heizer and James Turrell – who are creating artworks that require not only the artists’ creative minds but significant engineering, as these feats of imagination will sit permanently in the stunning desert valley – this generation’s gift to the world. One of the most ambitious and epic examples of this is Wadi AlFann, or Valley of the Arts. Today, AlUla is reviving this creative legacy by attracting artists from across the globe for residencies, exhibitions, workshops and more. Inspiring surroundings: the waves on the installation 'Dark Suns, Bright Waves' by Claudia Comte mimic the movements of sand dunes The rock art found in the sprawling desert, the natural colours daubed on ancient pottery and bright carpets, which typically adorned clay walls, are all evocative of this majestic landscape, which has long influenced the people who lived here and moved through it. The colours, shapes and sounds of the desert in AlUla in northwest Saudi Arabia have always inspired. I’m in AlUla to discover more about its creative heritage and how it's preserving this while fostering contemporary talent. The recliners, cushions, sunshades and even the sapphire-hued water in the pool bask in a warm violet luminescence.Īnd then, sharp yellow rays shoot out of the sun’s surface, piercing the cumuli that had preceded its arrival to form a crown of stripes that glisten and announce to the world that day has just broken. A peach and crimson ombre drapes delicately across the sky and falls softly on everything. The surface of the sun glimmers orange and gold as it crawls up gently from the edge of the desert to peer over the flat rooftops of our chalet.
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