In Paris, 20 contemporary artists who have worked with AlUla are exhibiting

In the northwest of Saudi Arabia, the territory of the oasis city of AlUla has been welcoming since 2021 contemporary artists in residence. A dynamic which is part of a vast cultural development project supported by the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) and the French Agency for the Development of AlUla (AFALULA).

20 of them are gathered during this great art week in Paris, where they exhibit works created on site within a exhibition space of 1,200 square meters rue Saint-Merrialongside major contemporary art fairs (Art Basel Paris, Paris Internationale, AKAA, etc.).

20 artists with diverse practices

Arnaud Morand, commissioner of l’exposition “The Third World” (whose title was borrowed from a short story in the collection Fictions published by the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges in 1944), and responsible for Art and Creative Industries within the French Agency for the Development of AlUla (AFALULA) explains in the preamble: “In this region which displays stories with multiple faces, artists are gone in search of more tenuous stories which also contribute to shape society and its individuals. Everyone, by following their own path, has arrived at a postulate common to all: the anecdote, the poem, the allegory, the rock inscription, the tale, the rumor or even the joke have equal power on the mind . They themselves represent foundations for establishing alternative geographies of this unique environment and more broadly of the world that presents itself to us. »

The invited artists have extremely diverse practices. We find there the Moroccan documentary photographer M’hammed Kilito (born 1981), the pioneer of the use of artificial intelligence in art Grégory Chatonsky (born in 1971), the Emirati visual artist and performer Maitha Abdalla (born 1989), the ultra-inventive sculptor Hugo Servanin (born in 1994), the traveling photographer Louis-Cyprien Rials (born in 1981)… According to Arnaud Morand: “We are offering a unique experience: that of associating, for the first time on this scale, the gaze of artists and the approach scientific in the writing of stories, in the reinvention of a destination. »

Souvenirs for a trip

They all enter, in their own way, in dialogue with a territory of raw beautymarked by its sandstone mountains and punctuated with archaeological sites dating from the era of the kingdoms of Lihyan and the Nabataeans. They present films, sculptures, photographsso many memories of a particular residence, in a unique territory. Taking us on a subtle and poetic journey, without leaving the Marais.