Noor Riyadh 2024 looks to stars and the future with dazzling light displays

Annual festival returns to Saudi capital for fourth year, featuring both regional and international artists

Aether, a performative drone artwork by United Visual Artists, opened Noor Riyadh 2024. Photo: Noor Riyadh

Back for the fourth year, the annual light art festival Noor Riyadh once more brings the Saudi capital to life with a dazzling display of sculptural installations, immersive experiences and projection mapping, all using illumination in some innovative way.

This year’s festival, running until December 14, is curated by Saudi artist Effat Abdullah Fadag and international curator Alfredo Cramerotti, featuring more than 60 large-scale artworks under the theme Light Years Apart. Examining the relationship between althara (the Earth) and althuraya (the stars), the citywide exhibition explores the shifting tensions between physical and the metaphysical, our present and our dreams of the future, and how we traverse between the known and unknown.

The festival draws special attention to the Thuraya star cluster, an especially bright constellation which includes two hands – the amputated hand and the henna-dyed hand, known to the west as Cassiopeia: the guiding constellation needed to locate the North Star. Noor Riyadh brings attention back to the constellation’s local folktales, and the region’s ancient role in pioneering astronomy and navigation.

The 17-day festival, which boasts 14 Guinness World Records so far, will illuminate key locations across the city, with hubs at the King Abdulaziz Historical Centre, Wadi Hanifah and Jax District. Site-specific public artworks by 18 Saudi artists and 43 international artists from 18 countries will be on show, alongside workshops, seminars and community-driven events.

“Riyadh Art and Noor Riyadh celebrate the artistic spirit that thrives within our city and beyond. From families to emerging artists and students, Noor Riyadh offers a platform for artistic exchange and discovery, uniting residents and visitors through the magic of light art,” Noor Riyadh director Nouf Almoneef tells The National. “By enhancing Riyadh’s livability through festivals, community activities, and permanent artworks, the city has transformed into a vibrant cultural destination.

“We really focused on our hubs this year, choosing hubs that embodied different themes and topics. We have history and heritage at the historical centre, nature and environment in Wadi Hanifah, and culture and contemporary creativity at Jax, so we can’t wait for people to discover them all.”

The opening night featured the performative artwork Aether by United Visual Artists at the King Abdulaziz Historical Centre. Composed of a light display animated by 1,500 drones, the seven-minute show is inspired by the notion of hidden forces that shape our world, drawing on Pythagoras’ concept of Musica Universalis – meaning ‘music of the spheres’ – which suggests planets create a higher form of sound that is inaudible to the human ear. Aether lends visual spectacle to this silent harmony of the stars and planets.

Another popular installation is Rashed AlShashai’s The Fifth Pyramid, a monumental sculptural work that explores Saudi Arabia’s rapidly evolving creative industries through the idea of a deconstructed pyramid. The piece resembles an ancient temple, with an ominous red pathway bisecting the structure, made from over 130,000 repurposed petrochemical shipping pallets and metal scaffolding.

“The Fifth Pyramid is built next to the Murabba Palace, which is the first building built by King Abdulaziz outside the city of Riyadh. It has this historical and cultural significance,” AlShashai tells The National. “From this, Riyadh has expanded to the modern city that we know today, and continues to develop, becoming a major player in both economy and culture in the region.

“My artwork is a commentary on the development of Riyadh, using the symbol of shipping pallets, to show our connection from the modern era, moving to the contemporary era, but always looking to the future and how we can grow,” he adds, “moving from an industrial economic hub into a city of arts and culture.”

Over in the Jax District, a former industrial warehouse park now renovated into artist studios, design collectives and community spaces, artworks fuse technology and digital art with traditional practice, such as Asma Aljohani’s Almajlis: The Woven Echo. Her work captures real-time conversations and displays the audiovisual data on electronic woven fabric in the form of colour and light.

Takayuki Mori’s View Tracing #5 Labyrinth offers a multimedia installation that highlights Saudi heritage through cultural objects, while having the look of computer-generated graphics.

3D models of a falcon, incense burner, coffee pot, oud, dates and more have been outlined and covered with fluorescent threads in geometric patterns that make them appear two-dimensional. Placed around a dark room with several mazelike pathways, these objects glow under ultraviolet light and blend traditional iconography with modern aesthetics.

“I designed the structures based on Islamic geometric patterns and I chose some traditional regional objects, which also represent the five scenes like dates for taste, coffee for smell, the oud for sound, etc,” Mori says.

“It took about 20 days to pin all the threads in place over the room, and everything was 3D-printed in Saudi Arabia, showing the modern advancement and contemporary look combined with a traditional topic,” he adds.

“The fluorescent threads are all in red, green and blue – the RGB computer colour spectrum – and I wanted the whole artwork to be a pathway between the physical and digital, modern and old and reality and dreamscape.”

On the outskirts of the city is Wadi Hanifah, a valley and public park where locals set up barbecues, picnics and games to enjoy the cooler evenings. This hub had some of the larger artworks, as they had more space to play with.

Standouts include Atelier Sisu’s Effervescent, made from gigantic blow-up bubbles that change colour, as a whimsical joy-invoking artwork about the fleeting nature of time.

Others like Ebtisam Saleh’s Shabbah draws on environmental issues. Dozens of LED-lit bonfires raise awareness about the ecological impact of unchecked deforestation inviting people to gather around the “fires” and consider their impact on the planet.

“It explores the fragility of the Earth's ecosystem, resulting from wrong human practices and symbolically depicts the issue of logging,” Saleh says. “The work calls for a reconsideration of our relationship with the environment and emphasises the importance of assuming collective responsibility to achieve a positive transformation and to preserve the natural balance.

“The work consists of pieces of natural wood cut to size and fixed together,” she adds, “with medical splints lit from within as if they were broken bones trying to heal together.”

During the festival, guided tours, special performances that activate certain artworks and other community events, will be held alongside the vibrant artwork that illuminate the city.

Noor Riyadh runs until December 14