Wadi AlFann: pioneering land artists commissioned for AlUla’s desert art venue – The National

Wadi AlFann: pioneering land artists commissioned for AlUla’s desert art venue – The National

The first artist commissions have been announced for Wadi AlFann, the ambitious permanent desert art venue planned for AlUla in Saudi Arabia. The works, by the US artists James Turrell, Agnes Denes and Michael Heizer — all pioneers of the Land Art movement — and two projects by the established Saudi names Ahmed Mater and Manal AlDowayan, are scheduled to launch by 2024.

The Royal Commission for AlUla, the government commission that oversees the development of the tourist and heritage site, also named Iwona Blazwick, the former director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London, as chair of its Public Art Expert panel, advising on Wadi AlFann.

“It’s pretty spectacular to be able to have artists of the older generation who understood that the desert was not a kind of wasteland,” says Blazwick. “In America, there are whole areas called the Badlands, or indeed in the Middle East, there is Empty Quarter, which speak to this idea that deserts are just big, empty, dead places. But these are the artists who saw [the desert’s] potential, in sculptural terms.”