For seventeen nights at the end of 2025, Noor Riyadh spread light art across the Saudi capital. The fifth edition of the festival, presented by Riyadh Art under the Royal Commission for Riyadh City, ran from 20 November to 6 December with 60 artworks by 59 artists from 24 countries, more than 35 of them new commissions.
Its theme, In the Blink of an Eye, pointed to the speed at which Riyadh is changing. The curators, Mami Kataoka of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Riyadh-based Sara Almutlaq and Li Zhenhua of Beijing Art Lab, grouped large works across six sites, setting them beside heritage buildings as well as the new metro stations and contemporary towers.
From the metro to the old city
The locations ran from north to south: the Riyadh Art space at JAX District, a former industrial area now home to studios and galleries; KAFD Metro Station by Zaha Hadid Architects; stc Metro Station by Gerber Architekten; Al Faisaliah Tower by Foster + Partners; and the historic Qasr Al Hokm District and King Abdulaziz Historical Center.
On top of Al Faisaliah Tower, László Zsolt Bordos’s Astrum sent beams up to seven kilometres into the sky, pointing to celestial bodies in real time. At KAFD Metro Station, Vali Chincișan’s The Vision Grid turned the façade into a lattice of light set to an electronic score, while Christophe Berthonneau, working with Bordos, combined mapping and drones in Synthesis so that a building seemed to float.
Light, data and air
The Italian collective fuse* translated detailed lunar data into Luna Somnium, an audiovisual piece housed in a tall square metal structure. James Clar built a frozen bolt of lightning from neon and scaffolding, and Alex Schweder’s Clockwise Invitations was an inflatable environment whose chambers and passages shifted as visitors moved through it.
Among the Saudi artists, Fatma Abdulhadi suspended a shadow garden in ghost fabrics in Keep your eyes on the light: Into Another Garden, and Ahmad Angawi drew on Najdi Sadu patterns and the Saudi falcon in Algorithms of Light: The Falcon. Since its first edition in 2021, Noor Riyadh has shown more than 550 works by 500 artists to over 9.6 million visitors, part of a wider cultural build-up in the city that also includes Balzar Architects’ museum of contemporary art.
Festival: Noor Riyadh / @noorriyadhfestival
Photography: Noor Riyadh
Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
