August 5, 2024
Artists

Desert X AlUla 2024 sees artists explore illusion and mirage


The theme for Desert X AlUla 2024 – on until 23 March, the latest land art exhibition from the California-founded Desert X organisation – is making the invisible visible, with the title ‘In the Presence of Absence’. The desert being a place of winds and mirages, dust-clouded perception and desire’s imaginative projections, the 18 commissioned artists – including Giuseppe Pennone, Kimsooja and Ayman Yossri Daydban – played with notions of illusion. All were awed by the landscape and had moments of doubt in their capacity to contribute something worthy. AlUla’s desertscapes are so dramatic that the context is not a backdrop but dominates the senses, rendering everything manmade insignificant. The better human efforts are humble gestures and endearing attempts. Festival co-curator Marcello Dantas (alongside Maya El Khalil) says: ‘The works here need the landscape for their power. It doesn’t get more site-specific.’

Desert X AlUla 2024

Desert X AlUla’s most successful installations are tonal with the environment, while those in bright colours and synthetic materials generate a visceral sense of inflicting a petty violence against their ancient host. In fact, producing some of the natural-looking installations involved more disruption than installing the louder works, and in practice no matter how much the curatorial and artist statements reflect a genuine desire to work sensitively, the majority of interactions by the festival and its visitors with this desert inevitably alter its previously comparatively pristine ecosystem. Desert X (last seen in the Coachella Valley in 2023) follows the ‘Leave no trace’ mantra of California’s more experimental desert arts festival Burning Man, but just like at Burning Man, it can be hard to forget about things like emissions while appreciating the expressive extravaganza.

Desert X AlUla 2024 installation resembling low pyramid with steps to entrance

(Image credit: Desert X AlUla 2024, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of The Royal Commission for AlUla)

Among this year’s commissions, two beautiful architectural structures work with desert dust in ways that are naturally and culturally harmonious while having a visceral effect on the body. Saudi architects Sara Alissa and Nojoud Alsudairi worked with natural builder Earth Man to build down into the desert floor for Invisible Possibilities: When the Earth Began to Look at Itself, using the age-old rammed-earth technique found across all cultures. Dust was repacked only with corn starch and water to give it enough strength to hold its stepped cut through the ground, inviting guests to know how it is to be within the body of the desert itself. 





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