Desert X Exhibition Will Inhabit AlUla Valleys From Jan 16 to Feb 28

Set across AlUla’s canyons, valleys, and open desert, Desert X AlUla is an outdoor exhibition dedicated to contemporary art created in direct response to place. Running from January 16th to February 28th, 2026, the project forms part of the wider AlUla Arts Festival, using the region’s landscape as both setting and material for large-scale, site-specific works.

The exhibition unfolds entirely outdoors, encouraging visitors to move through AlUla’s terrain rather than encounter artworks in a single venue. Sculptural installations, architectural interventions, and sound- and light-based works are positioned to interact with the environment, shifting with daylight, weather, and perspective. The experience is deliberately spatial, with distance, scale, and movement shaping how each work is encountered.

This year’s curatorial framework, ‘Space Without Measure’, draws inspiration from Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-American writer, poet, and artist whose work often explored the relationship between the spiritual and the everyday. His writing frequently returns to ideas of perception, possibility, and the limits of language—an approach that aligns with an exhibition concerned with vastness, proportion, and what resists clear definition.