The light festival of Saudi Arabia’s capital might sound a bit lacklustre or corny, but it did exactly what it set out to do: amuse, entertain and maybe even educate locals after a difficult year.
Light comes at you fast. In Rashed AlShashai’s kinetic sculpture Searching for Darkness (2021), crazily spinning lights describe a disarticulated conifer, a whirling dancer. In Abdullah AlOthman’s Casino AlRiyadh (2021), neon signage harkens back to a popular 1960s dinner spot in the Saudi capital as well as the embarrassment of creative, rather kooky signage that lights up the city. And in Ahmed Mater’s unshowy Antenna (Green) (2010), a neon aerial casts an acid-green glow. It’s a remembrance of the artist’s childhood in the southwestern mountain city of Abha, fiddling with the TV aerial to receive signals from nearby Yemen or Sudan, but it feels more like an antenna broadcasting the New Saudi Arabia to the world.
This is Light Upon Light: Light Art since the 1960s, part of the inaugural Noor Riyadh festival, which is in turn part of a recursive series of blueprints for the city’s and country’s future.
