Desert X announces third exhibition in AlUla, Saudi Arabia for 2024

Following the 2023 edition of Desert X held throughout the Coachella Valley, the art biennial is returning to AlUla, Saudi Arabia in 2024 for its third exhibition.

The exhibition will be held Feb. 9 through March 23.

Raneem Farsi and Neville Wakefield will return as this year’s artistic directors, and the theme of the exhibition, which is curated by Maya El Khalil and Marcello Dantas, is "In the Presence of Absence." Artists will create artwork that imagines new perspectives of time, wind, light, history and myths woven into the place and landscape.

Artists for the exhibition will be announced at a later date.

Desert X AlUla is a collaboration between Desert X and the Royal Commission for AlUla. Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is listed as the Chairman of the Board for the Royal Commission for AlUla.

A statement from Desert X said it has also "played a pivotal role in paving the way" for an initiative of the Royal Commission For AlUla known as Wadi AlFann, a 65-square kilometer site that will feature permanent land art. Wadi AlFann is due to open in 2026, and the 2024 Desert X exhibition will expand into the same valley.

AlUla is a UNESCO heritage site

The desert of AlUla in northwest Saudi Arabia, home to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Hegra (Mada'in Saleh), an archaeological site dating back thousands of years to the Lihyan and Nabataean kingdoms, has become a popular tourism destination. According to Arab News, the city made preparations to receive 250,000 visitors in 2023. Its cultural backdrop has attracted a vibrant arts scene and performances by musicians such as Seal, Canadian comedian Russell Peters and more.

Up until 2019, the kingdom only issued business or visitor visas for a religious pilgrimage to the holy sites of Mecca and Medina. As a plan to diversify its economy through tourism and entertainment (like neighboring Dubai), the country announced an electronic visa for visitors coming from 49 countries — including the United States.

Desert X said it received 9,000 visitors at its first AlUla exhibition in 2020 over its five-week run featuring 14 artists from Saudi Arabia, Middle East, Europe and North America. Lita Albuquerque's sculpture "NAJMA ( She Placed One Thousand Suns Over The Transparent Overlays of Space" was the first human sculpture publicly displayed in the kingdom since the rise of Islam, according to the Saudi curators of Desert X AlUla. Audience figures for the second edition of Desert X AlUla in 2022 tripled to 24,000.

For the third exhibition in the Coachella Valley, Desert X included Saudi artist Zahrah Alghamdi's "What Lies Beyond the Walls" to Desert Hot Springs, which organizers said was one of the most-visited installations of the 2021 edition.

Past criticism from local city councils over Saudi exhibitions

Saudi Arabia has faced condemnation from international organizations including the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in recent years for alleged human rights violations and war crimes in Yemen.

When Desert X announced its 2020 exhibition in AlUla, Los Angeles-based contemporary artist Ed Ruscha said the collaboration with a Saudi Arabian government initiative led him to resign from Desert X's board, given the country's human rights record and reported involvement in the killing of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Desert X received criticism from city councils in Palm Desert and Palm Springs in 2019 and 2021 for its exhibitions in Saudi Arabia, citing the country's history of human rights violations and practices of sharia law.

"I support the belief that art transcends a lot of political issues," said Ron deHarte, president of Palm Springs Pride in 2021. "However, when art supports and attempts to bring credibility to an entity widely condemned for human rights abuses in a country where 50% of our own residents would be condemned to death, it is not right.

In response to what Desert X Founder and President Susan Davis called "inaccurate attacks" in 2021 letter against Desert X by local elected officials, they are "reassured that continuing to confront difficult contexts everywhere is necessary if we are ever to live up to the ideals we claim to be led by."

"We believe deeply that art has the potential to challenge the divides that segregate our world and that engagement, no matter how difficult or controversial, will always be a better strategy than an isolationist approach rooted in selective moral grounds," Davis said.

The biennial will return to the Coachella Valley in 2025

Desert X 2025 will run March 8 - May 11, 2025 at sites across the Coachella Valley. The organization has presented four exhibitions since 2017 featuring more than 80 international artists to an audience over 1 million. In September, Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas was announced as a co-curator of the 2025 exhibition.

The 2023 exhibition featured 10 large-scale installations spanning the area between Desert Hot Springs and Palm Desert with themes such as a fictitious conspiracy theory, the plight of the Salton Sea, a remembrance of water flowing through the desert and more.

Some highlights included Matt Johnson's "Sleeping Figure," a large installation made of shipping containers at Haugen-Lehman Way and Railroad Avenue; Cahuilla artist and Anza resident Gerald Clarke's "Immersion," a 100-foot take on a coiled basket and a circular game board at James O. Jessie Desert Highland Unity Center in Palm Springs; and Lauren Bon and Metabolic Studio's "The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart," a whale structure in a heart-shaped pool that speaks to sea's water shortage and fish skeleton "sand" and the large number of pools in the Coachella Valley.

A previous version of this article included incorrect information about Desert X's involvement in Wadi AlFann.

Previous reporting by USA TODAY was included in this report.

Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment for the Desert Sun. He can be reached at brian.blueskye@desertsun.com or on Twitter at @bblueskye.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Desert X announces third exhibition in AlUla, Saudi Arabia