Riyadh will turn into an open-air art gallery for 17 days, with over 33 light installations spread throughout the Kingdom's capital.

Amid the global pandemic, Noor Riyadh, the mammoth festival of lights, launched its first edition on Thursday, March 18. This pivotal artistic event aims to celebrate not only the scope of artistry exemplified by the work of the over 60 foreign and Saudi artists who will participate but the beginning of the Kingdom's drive for a more creative economy.

A single pop-up coffee shop stands on the grounds of the Cultural Palace in Riyadh's prestigious Diplomatic Quarter, symbolizing Saudi Arabia's famous pastime. However, there is something special about this coffee shop. The pop-exterior up's is lit in a soft glow and covered in poetic Arabic phrases.

The pop-up, titled "Ricochet," is a light installation by Nojoud Alsudairi, the festival's youngest artist, who addresses public space through Arabic poetry. The cup itself is covered with poetic phrases such as "In your land, generosity, always" or "I have no other location" when visitors take a cup of coffee.

Alsudairi, 26, collected haikus, a Japanese poetic form, and deconstructed phrases from letters written by Riyadh residents to their city during the quarantine.

“During the pandemic, my dissertation began as a research project into how Riyadh citizens communicated with their city during quarantine,” Alsudairi explained. “I started asking people I knew to give me short phrases about how they saw the city from their windows, and this gave me the idea to integrate literature into the project through signage throughout the city,” says the artist.

The result was a visual essay on how Riyadh's signage was transforming into the city's GUI. Driving through Riyadh's streets at night, one can see how the city has transformed into an electric landscape, with all of these words and sentences creating strange bits of conceptual poetry.

Riyadh will be turned into an open-air gallery until April 3rd, with large-scale light installations illuminating the area. What makes this exhibition dynamic, is "that Noor Riyadh has included numerous Saudi artists, many of whom have been commissioned to create pieces particularly for the exhibition," says Raneem Farsi, the exhibition's Saudi curator.

The artworks will be found in two main areas: the King Abdul Aziz Historical Center and the King Abdullah Financial District, where tourists can also see “Light Upon Light,” an exhibition of light art from the 1960s to the present, which will be on display until June 12.  The artworks will be viewed virtually by the rest of the world.

According to Anas Najmi, advisor to the Royal Commission for Riyadh City, “one of the most important aspects of Vision 2030 is the flourishing of the Saudi creative economy and this is one of the key highlights of Noor Riyadh as a program. Despite the pandemic's challenges, we were able to provide the experience to 15,000 tourists in just one day. The Noor Riyadh festival resulted in the development of over 1,200 jobs, half of which are for Saudis.”

The main exhibition, “Light Upon Light,” presents a comprehensive overview of the history of light art through the works by leading international light artists such as Dan Flavin, James Turrell, Lucio Fontana, Julio Le Parc, and Robert Irwin, as well as contemporary art world superstars like Urs Fischer and Yayoi Kusama. Nasser Al-Salem, Manal AlDowayan, Rashed AlShashai, Sultan bin Fahad, Dana Awartani, Maha Malluh, Ayman Yossri Daydban, Ahmed Mater, Ahmad Angawi, Abdullah AlOthman, Sarah Abu Abdallah, and Mohammad AlFaraj are among the Saudi Arabian artists whose work is on display.

Saudi artists' light works use symbolic structures that reference both the country's ancient history and present. Sultan bin Fahad's "Once Was A Ruler" (2019), for example, is a collection of composites combining his photography of ancient statues of monarchs from the ancient Arabian kingdom of Lihyan with his bodily X-rays. Abdullah Al-"Casino Othman's AlRiyadh" (2021) is a neon-colored sign that imitates the city of Riyadh's distinctive morphology while also drawing influence from the city's lighted signage. It also applies to previous meeting sites in Riyadh.

Robert Wilson's piece "PALACE OF LIGHT" is perhaps the most strong marriage of old and new Saudi through the medium of light art (2021). Multiple performative light elements that dress the landscape of At-Turaif — the historic district of Diriyah and the first capital of the Saudi dynasty dating back to 1766. A large copper dish is placed in front of the palace. When the light performance is played, appears to be rising out of the sea as the curved edges of Diriyah's mudbrick structure is covered with projecting images of moving waves.