THE ART OF
ILLUMINATION
The Middle East’s biggest celebration of light, the spectacular Noor Riyadh, featured 59 participating artists from 24 nations showing some 60 artworks.
Presented by Riyadh Art, under the Royal Commission for Riyadh City (RCRC), the fifth edition of the festival illuminated the capital every night from 20 November until 6 December 2025.
Since 2021, Noor Riyadh has attracted more than 9.6 million visitors and spectators, presenting more than 550 artworks by 500 artists from around the world.
Alongside its citywide installations, the festival offers a vibrant public program of community activities, workshops, and panels that bring people together through art. The festival continues to embody Riyadh Art’s mission to enrich daily life through creativity, to develop the creative economy, and to inspire dialogue across communities.
The 2025 event was curated under the theme ‘In the Blink of an Eye’, referencing the rapid transformation shaping Riyadh.
Large-scale artworks were grouped across six locations, positioned alongside both heritage buildings and the sleek, modern lines of Riyadh’s award-winning metro system and contemporary architecture.
New commissions
Curated by Mami Kataoka – the curatorial advisory lead and director at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo – alongside Riyadh-based curator Sara Almutlaq, and Li Zhenhua, curator and founder of Beijing Art Lab, the festival unveiled more than 35 new commissions by leading Saudi and international artists.
“Each year, Noor Riyadh grows in ambition and impact,” said Nouf Almoneef, Festival Director of Noor Riyadh.
“I’m proud that we continue to champion artists, strengthen the creative economy, and build connections between Saudi talent and the international arts community. Together, we are shaping Riyadh into a global capital for culture today and for generations to come.”
Artwork highlights included Luna Somnium (2025) from fuse, the Italian art and architecture collective. The collective transformed detailed lunar data into a multisensory cosmic experience within a towering square metal structure. Aligned with orbital rhythms, ethereal visuals oscillate between abstraction and cosmology, turning scientific observation into a meditative dream of celestial yearning.
Sliced (2025) by Swiss audiovisual team Encor Studio reflected the practice’s mission to reveal the invisible and reshape perception. Encor Studio was founded in 2016 by Mirko Eremita, David Houncheringer, Manuel Oberholzer, and Valerio Spoletini.
Sliced (2025) by Swiss audiovisual team Encor Studio reflected the practice’s mission to reveal the invisible and reshape perception. Encor Studio was founded in 2016 by Mirko Eremita, David Houncheringer, Manuel Oberholzer, and Valerio Spoletini.
Japanese artist Shinji Ohmaki expanded his celebrated Liminal Air series in Riyadh, immersing a vast hall with thousands of fine threads that capture light like morning mist. Stirred by air currents, the threads drift in ethereal waves, rendering empty space as a tangible volume.
Liminal Air Space-Time (2025) invited visitors to wander slowly, each movement reshaping the field of view, each step unveiling new depths. Ohmaki’s art dwells in the threshold between stillness and flow, presence and evaporation.
Place of History’s Inscription (2025) reinterpreted a familiar spiritual scene through a cubist lens, fragmenting form and space to reflect collective movement and ritual. As an homage to Abdulrahman AlSoliman’s influential role in the history of Saudi modernist art, the work was projected onto the wall of Al-Masmak Fort.
Through the medium of moving image, the animation extended AlSoliman’s study of structure and geometry, transforming the painted composition into living motion. Disciplined geometry rooted in local architecture, figures depicted as rhythmic signs, and colour harmonies drawn to depict the landscape and ritual of Saudi Arabia came to life, informing audiences of the geometric relationships between form, shadow, and colour value. By activating the scene, the animated form traces the artist’s interest in communal space and its cadence.
All images courtesy Noor Riyadh.