At the time of the press preview, the installations were still being planned or under construction. Journalists were taken to the depths of the valley by Land Rover; as we drove further from the hotel, the highway gradually disappeared, morphing into undulating sand dunes. Along the way, the construction sites of a couple of resorts were visible in the otherwise empty wilderness. A car, with a tire sunk in sand on the slope of a dune, was waiting for rescue.

When we eventually reached the site, Blazwick and Gibbons-Warren led us to the top of a dune to look at the view: a wide channel with naturally occurring caves along one side; these spaces are where artworks will be installed. “Where we’re standing will be the orientation pavilion,” Gibbons-Warren says, referring to the spot where visitors will be able to speak to staff and design their Wadi AlFann experience. “You’ll get your maps, work out where you want to go, pick up your horses, camels or bicycles, or decide how you want to navigate the space. We want to make sure that this is not ‘this way round the gallery’, but a place that you can roam, encounter and enjoy freely.”

We descended the dune and walked further into the site, and were treated to a completely different view and landscape: rock columns that look like giant mushrooms due to years of weathering, cliffs with an oculus in the middle, meandering canyon valleys and bare plateaus. “We’re surrounded by the deep time of geology, which is an amazing opportunity for artists to come to learn about the atmosphere, topography and texture of the desert. People think of deserts as dead places, but it’s full of life—there are 52 species of birds here and many other animals which call this their home,” says Blazwick. “I’m a ‘desert groupie’, and I have never seen a landscape like this.”

The unique topography around Wadi AlFann made the choice of artistic genre obvious. Blazwick explains that landscape art emerged in America and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, when artists rejected the city and the “white cube” approach of the traditional gallery and went out into landscapes that were often designated as wastelands. “If you look at maps of the southwest of America, you’ll see Badlands—these are places where crops can’t grow and people can’t settle,” she says. “But it was artists who realised that they have this sublime beauty.”

Here in AlUla, the team is working with some of the most established artists of the genre. “Our mission is to create a marriage between this astonishing desertscape and great landscape art by pioneering artists,” Blazwick says. Denes’ work, for example, is a series of pyramids to be anchored in the rocks, arranged as if they are hurtling down the canyon. “They’re not straight lines. They taper and move as if they’re being blown by the wind,” Blazwick explains. The 92-year-old Denes, who is too frail to travel to Saudi Arabia, sent Blazwick drafts over the past few months for the on-site team to install. The artist is inspired by geometry which has its genesis with Arabic philosophers and thinkers; like many forms of Islamic architecture and art, the ancient form of building portrayed in Denes’ artwork relied on geometric rules which carry a great deal of symbolism.

Blazwick led the journalists down a path in the maze-like valley to another part of the canyon where a tunnel-boring machine was drilling holes for geotechnical investigations. This is a potential site for Ashab Al-Lal, a work by doctor-turned-artist Mater, who draws ideas from The Book of Optics, a mediaeval, seven-volume treatise by Arab scholar Ibn al-Haytham that revolutionised optics, the branch of physics that studies the properties and behaviour of light. Toying with the idea of mirages, Mater plans to create a colossal tunnel that leads to an underground, flying saucer-shaped mirrored room that reflects and projects a life-size image of the visitors on the surface above. From afar, other viewers walking towards the installation will see this visitor as a mirage. “Ahmed talks about the mirage as a kind of metaphor for hope, for moving towards something you see shimmering on the horizon,” Blazwick explains. “For him, this concept is analogous with what’s happening in the kingdom [Saudi Arabia], where 70 per cent of the population are under the age of 27. They see hope on the horizon, and this work speaks to that.”

Other installations include AlDowayan’s labyrinthine installation Oasis of Stories, which references the mud walls of AlUla’s Old Town. For hundreds of years, it was bustling waypoint on the pilgrimage route to Mecca before its abandonment in the 1980s. Viewers will be invited to walk through and get lost in the architectonic sculpture that replicates the settlement, and learn the personal histories and folklore of AlUla’s communities inscribed on the walls by the artist. Turrell will continue his exploration of space, colour and perception to create a series of spaces on the canyon floor, installed with stairs and tunnels, that play with the quality of light and elements of the sky and terrain, offering a way to reflect on our senses. Finally, Heizer, who has been working with rocks, concrete and steel in his practice, will introduce incised engravings to the golden Quweira sandstone rocks, the variety found also in Jordan into which the ancient Nabataean people carved their magnificent tombs.

Gibbons-Warren adds that the team has very ambitious plans. “We want artists to consider all aspects of the landscape and use it as a canvas,” she says. For instance, Nine Songs, a concert inspired by ancient Chinese poetry that premiered at the site in November 2022, brought together western and Asian musicians across genres.

As well as tourists coming in from all around the world, the team intends Wadi AlFann to be a destination for the 50,000 people who live in AlUla. “It’s important that this art space has a direct relationship with the local community because they are the ones who will return every week for the art, classes or events,” Gibbons-Warren says. “Generations have marked their names within the site and rock art; we want to make sure that our project is honouring the spirit of this landscape,” she says.

This means the artists’ practical considerations regarding protecting the permanent installations against erosion and weathering is as important as their creative decisions. “All our artists are so enthralled by the possibility of working in such an astonishing place because it is unique on the planet. Our dream is to make things which are already here so that we’re not bringing things which are utterly foreign to this ecosystem,” Gibbons-Warren says. “I hope that it’s going to be a model for art in the landscape in the future.”

In creating Wadi AlFann, the team isn’t only showing Saudi Arabia in a new light, but introducing the world to this land of ancient heritage that has an impact on today’s maths, art and history. AlDowayan is proud to be a part of this life-changing project that puts her home country on the map and marks a new chapter in art history, both regionally and globally, saying: “I am excited about the vast opportunities that Wadi AlFann will provide for local communities and creatives, thus inspiring a new generation of arts professionals.”

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