The exhibition Future of Nostalgia marks a new milestone in AlUla’s international influence and contributes to positioning it within the global exchanges of contemporary creation. By bringing together artists, curators, and international partners, it highlights the scope of one-of-a-kind destination and cultural initiative — one that fosters the circulation of expertise, the emergence of new artistic practices, and the connection of AlUla with major cultural capitals in the world. This exhibition also marks a milestone in the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Japan. Over seven decades, the two nations have built a deep and enduring partnership founded on mutual respect, cultural exchange, and shared aspirations for innovation and progress. The presentation of Future of Nostalgia during this anniversary year reflects that spirit of collaboration, celebrating the creative dialogue between Saudi and Japanese art scenes and the enduring bond between both nations.
Bringing together artists who have lived and worked in AlUla, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, through its residency programme, the exhibition approaches the oasis, its original context of creation, as a palimpsest where geology, oral histories, archeological sites, and emerging technologies overlap. Since 2021, the AlUla Artist Residency Programme has invited artists to narrate this place into presence. In this exceptional setting, whose history spans millennia, archaeological traces of pre-Islamic civilisations coexist with the tangible and symbolic influences of the Arab world. Basalt and sandstone preserve the marks of ancient rites and millennia-old pilgrimages; palm groves veil the remains of earlier settlements; cliffs and deserts carved by volcanoes, seas, and winds, now meet and harmonize with urban ambitions turned toward the future, standing at the threshold of utopia.
Accelerated societal change fractures our sense of belonging, giving rise to a longing that is both affective and diagnostic. The artists gathered here harness that impulse as a catalyst for imagining futures that are plural, grounded, and open to debate. They explore how the narratives we preserve about where we come from actively shape where we might be headed. By questioning our perception of reality,and how time alters it, these works leave us with a generative question: not “What is?” but “What if?”
While nostalgia is often dismissed as mere sentimental yearning, a wistful gaze backward to the past, for cultural theorist Svetlana Boym, it is not simply a longing to return to a past time or place, nor is it ever detached from the present. In The Future of Nostalgia (2002) —her seminal reflection at the turn of the new century, and the inspiration for this exhibition’s title — Svetlana Boym characterizes nostalgia as a sentiment that can be experienced collectively, capable of shaping societies both in their present form and in their imagined futures. The very notion of nostalgia might seem out of step in an era primarily driven by future-building and the promises of 21st century progress and technological boom. Yet, in this fast-moving world, our vision of the future is also shaped by an awareness of the traces the present leaves behind for generations to come. The desires of today and the needs of tomorrow are in constant negotiation. In its effort to remain agile, and caught in a general sense of acceleration, our time risks forgetting to celebrate, or even simply to inhabit, the present.**
Participating artists: Maitha Abdalla, Yasmina Benabderrahmane, Bianca Bondi, Sarah Brahim, Salomé Chatriot, Mohammad Alfaraj, Sara Favriau, M’hammed Kilito, Agnieszka Kurant, Han Mengyun, Théo Mercier, Abdessamad El Montassir, Louis-Cyprien Rials, Daniah Alsaleh, Anhar Aalem, Ugo Schiavi, Hugo Servanin, Sofiane Si Merabet, Ittah Yoda, Ayman Zedani.
Curated by Arnaud Morand and Ali Alghazzawi.
Press release from Arts AlUla
Image: Théo Mercier. Landscript. 2025. Exhibition view from Future of Nostalgia. Produced with the support of Arts AlUla and AFALULA © Timothee Lambrecq
