About Reunion
Reunion brings together research and practice from the inaugural NEOM Entertainment and Culture artist-in-residence program, where seven artists respond to a region in transition. Through photography, video, installation, and mixed media, their works explore themes of place, transformation, and human impact—offering a creative dialogue with the Kingdom’s evolving landscape.
Originally presented in NEOM, Reunion is recontextualized for its new setting at the inaugural Art Week Riyadh, taking place in JAX. Under the overarching theme At The Edge, the exhibition finds fresh resonance in a platform that explores thresholds and liminality — concepts deeply embedded in the artists’ works. This shift from NEOM to Riyadh expands the dialogue, situating the artists’ reflections on change within the broader currents of Saudi Arabia’s cultural evolution.
Developed and delivered by Alserkal Advisory in collaboration with NEOM’s Entertainment & Culture sector and international partner TBA21, the 12-week residency invited artists from Saudi Arabia and beyond to work alongside researchers and experts in urbanism, sustainability, and heritage. The artists engaged with the shifting environment, creating works that connect the region’s past, present, and imagined future.
Abdulmohsen Al Bin Ali
b. 1988, Saudi Arabia
Title: Reverse Ornithomancy
Year: 2024
Media: Photography, video
This work explores ornithomancy—the belief that birds predict human fate—alongside contemporary avian networks in NEOM. It juxtaposes a photograph of the first bird encountered there with video footage of birds observed in NEOM and Madrid. Investigating how birds navigate human environments, both physically and symbolically, it questions human intervention in NEOM’s landscape, reversing the perspective: instead of birds predicting human futures, what does the future hold for them?
Ahaad Alamoudi
b. 1991, Saudi Arabia
Title: Work In Progress
Year: 2025
Media: Single-channel video, installation
Alamoudi’s work examines how the mirrored surface of the future Line project will allow NEOM’s natural landscape to witness itself for the first time. By placing a photographic print of Bajdah’s desert within its actual landscape, she highlights the power of the image in its natural context, highlighting the tension between reality and fabrication. The viewer follows Alamoudi’s character running and breaking through these images in slow motion, questioning: Do you believe in reality or illusion?
Ayman Zedani
b. 1984, Saudi Arabia
Title: To The Eagles, Chapter 2 (Work In Progress)
Year: 2025
Media: Multimedia installation
Zedani’s installation brings past projects together with current research focusing on the NEOM region. The artist ties these projects together with a map that traces seven mountain peaks and seven spiritual valleys, beginning at the Arabian Sea and ending at the Gulf of Aqaba. Through world-building incorporating both the human and more-than-human, Zedani constructs a pseudo-fictional shared heritage that brings together the ecological and the spiritual across time.
Bilal Allaf
b. 1988, Saudi Arabia
Title: Chapter 7: Volt
Year: 2025
Media: Single-channel 16:9 video (edit in progress)
Allaf’s research explored the evolving relationship of humans with technology. Expressing narrative through movement, the work explores the emotions of his interactions with Volt, an animalistic robot programmed by an engineer working within NEOM’s Design & Construction Sector.
Eduardo Cassina
b. 1986, Spain
Title: A Blanket for Dreaming
Year: 2025
Media: Phospherescent yarn, UV torch
Cassina’s tapestry traces thousands of years of urban innovation in the region now known as NEOM, encapsulating its evolving landscape in a dream-like state. It mirrors the facade of NC1’s original residential cabins, where Cassina conducted his research. Unfolding like a scroll, it moves chronologically from the Neolithic era to the contemporary Al Badaa, ending with the newest NEOM settlements. Under UV light, the map’s elements glow in the dark.
Liva Dudareva
b. 1984, Latvia
Title: Carbon Bloom
Year: 2025
Media: Installation: Inkjet Print
Dudareva’s installation explores how the region we know today as NEOM has evolved over deep, geological time, and its potential future lithic trajectory. She responds to the hypothesis that deserts can function as carbon sinks, which could provide part of the solution in humanity’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change and rising CO₂ levels. She imagines the desert as an underground forest, where she visually reconstructs the intricate interactions between the soil microbes, minerals and plant roots.
Tamara Kalo
b. 1994, Lebanon
Title: The Green Screen Line
Year: 2025
Media: Single-channel 16:9 video (37’21”), fabric installation
Through the act of rolling and unrolling a green fabric, Kalo questions how drawing a line in the landscape manifests not just physically but also in the collective imagination. She explores how bodies have moved through the landscape over time, tracing historic routes and pathways and juxtaposing these with new pathways being built for the future. The green screen effect of the fabric demonstrates an endless virtual possibility of mark-making in the landscape.
