(Draft) Rhythms of Rituals & Ceremonies
- Artelier
- 5 days ago
- 17 min read
The following review explores 6 local and international artists exhibited at Riyadh's annual light festival in 2024, Noor Riyadh. During the exhibition, Artelier formed strong partnerships with notable artists such as SpY, Federico Acciardi, Daan Roosegaarde, A.A Murakami, Random International and Ayman Yossri Daydban.
This partnership made a deep impression, highlighting the powerful role artists can play in shaping future landscapes through public art. Artelier curator, Ella Forster, reflects on the artworks after her time working on the exhibition.
Jump straight to the artists:
Introduction
Public art is [...] a marker of cultural pride, social commentary, human talent, and shared experiences. What has changed is the medium and the message — what was once carved in stone is now spray-painted on a wall or installed next to an iconic landmark. But the core purpose remains: to nourish, shape, and engage with the collective consciousness.
Calypso Lyhne-Gold, Curator at Artelier
What makes public art appealing to humankind? What makes it 'tick' in our consciousness? How does it transform our landmarks as well as change how we interact with them? Inherent in each public art installation is, to some degree, some sort of ritual or ceremony, which triggers something deeply embedded into the ways humans work and how we experience day-to-day life.
For example, humans are wired to seek out patterns and repetition. It was originally coded in our DNA as a survival response; day to day, our ancestors would look for animal tracks, weather patterns, or types of plant growth to predict food availability, identify dangers, and adapt to our environment. Essentially, it helped us make predictions and determine probabilities. Our appetite for repetition developed into a new behaviour; rituals. Quickly did building a fire, greeting others by waving a hand, or celebrating the birth of a baby becoming important - and repeated - rituals, which developed into ceremonies. Today, they hav evolved into a kaleidoscope of different traditions across the world.
And public art continues this behaviour in many ways. Engaging with art is a ritual in itself. Lovers of public art engage in their own rituals—visiting exhibitions, strolling through city squares to admire sculptures, or exploring the stories behind the artists and their work. Artists, too, engage in rituals. Their inspiration may be spontaneous and intuitive, or grounded in deep research into philosophy, history, or culture. Whatever the approach, this creative process is a personal ritual—one that helps bring their ‘inner artist’ to the surface. The end result? A ceremony — in art terms — might take the form of a pop-up exhibition, an art festival, a gallery opening, or even a quiet, personal moment of triumph: a simple mental celebration of saying “I’ve done it!”
Can public art capture our deep-rooted need for rituals and ceremonies? In the unique context of Noor Riyadh, can it be effectively realised through cutting-edge technology, or should it remain grounded in more traditional approaches to public art? In this article, we explore how public art responds to our human impulse for rituals and ceremonies—and why it continues to play a crucial role in nurturing human creativity.
Noor Riyadh
The world's largest light festival Noor Riyadh has successfully completed its fourth edition in 2024. It welcomed over 3 million visitors and brought together over 60 artworks by more than 60 artists from 18 countries.
Noor, coming from the Arabic word 'light', uses immersive light art installations with industry-leading technology, sound and visuals to light up Riyadh's public spaces. Under the theme Light Years Apart and curated by Saudi artist Dr Effat Abdullah Fadag and International curator Dr Alfredo Cramerotti, spectators experienced the installations across three iconic landmarks: King Abdulaziz Historical Center, Wadi Hanifah and JAX District.
For this article, why did we choose only six artworks? As art consultants, our role is to identify standout works that push creative boundaries—pieces that challenge convention, spark new ways of thinking, and demonstrate ideas bold in ambition and scale.
"Saudi Vision 2030" welcomes a new era of government-backed support for arts and culture, offering opportunities rarely seen in Europe in recent years. With its vast deserts and rapidly growing contemporary art scene, Saudi Arabia provides a unique canvas for large scale installations previously thought impossible or unachievable. For Noor Riyadh, artists had access to 75 miles of wadis and 126 acres of land—spanning from industrial zones to towering skyscrapers, from historical monuments to landmarks of nature. Unlike the limited confines of European white-box galleries, this flexible environment allows for immersive, interactive works that are up to 25 times the size of visitors, allowing them to touch, walk under, over, or even through the artwork. Saudi Arabia is sending a powerful message: art matters, and bold ideas should come to life.
Join us on this guided tour to discover a world-class display of public art.
The Artists
SpY, Spain
Anchored to a bridge near Wadi Hanifah, Ovoid (2024) by Spanish artist SpY is a monumental, site-specific installation featuring a glowing structure suspended above a body of water. Towering at 35 metres (115 feet), it emits a soft red glow from within, pulsing at rhythmic intervals as it looms over the lake. From afar, the glowing structure multiplies as it casts reflections on the wadi's water below.
From a distance, the structure takes on the unmistakable form of an egg—a symbol recognised across time and cultures to be long associated with fertility, birth, and the beginning of life. The ritual of birth is one of the few experiences shared equally by all—it cannot be avoided, nor does it discriminate. By taking on this symbolic form, Oviod pays tribute to the origin of life—a ritual that begins within the egg, seen both as a sanctuary and a symbol, a vessel of protection and a space for nurture. The installation also emits a soft, pulsing red light, mirroring the rhythm of a heartbeat. The effect is visceral, as if the city itself has been given a pulse: slow, steady, and vividly alive.
Public spaces—particularly functional landmarks like bridges and roads—are often overlooked for their creative potential. They are also frequent, yet unnoticed, centres of ritual—essential parts of daily life that are often overlooked. For those unfamiliar with it, a wadi by definition is a valley, ravine, or dry riverbed that only fills with water during the rainy season. It is shaped by the forces of nature, just as a bridge is shaped by human design to connect one place to another. Paired with Oviod, when these two landscapes—natural and manmade—meet, they form a dialogue between the organic and the constructed. In this setting, the quiet rituals of daily travel and the rhythms of seasonal weather unfold.
This transformation aligns with SpY’s broader practice, which blurs the lines between street art, sculpture, and architecture. Here, he activates space not just visually, but emotionally and psychologically. “I do not intend to create a static object,” the artist states, “but an experience that invites [viewers] to question the relationship with the urban environment.” The viewer does not simply observe Oviod—they enter into a ritual with it. Walking around it, feeling its scale, and watching their own reflection ripple beneath it becomes an act of embodied perception, one that is at once collective and deeply personal.
While these sites are easily overlooked by the everyday, innovators like SpY have reframed these marginal areas for rich creative potential. Oviod doesn’t merely sit within its environment—it animates it. The installation transforms a forgotten and easily overlooked space into a site of ceremony, symbolism, and sensory engagement, through the combination of light, sound, space and reflection.
Does Oviod's scale add to this effect? Do ceremonial spaces need to be monumental in scale to bring people together? SpY importantly reminds us that "scale is always relative.” Though Oviod appears colossal beside its viewers, it seems small next to the bridge's imposing pillars. Does this contrast affect Oviod's overall impact? On the contrary—it sparks a dialogue between the sculpture, its audience, and the urban space around it, prompting us to reflect on the evolving relationship between public art and the environments it occupies. In a refreshing twist, SpY transforms a once-overlooked location into an unconventional ceremonial space—one where viewers can pause, reflect, and reconnect with a forgotten corner of the city.
Federico Acciardi, Italy
In Choreography in the Void (2024), artist Federico Acciardi transforms a simple, familiar icon of summer—the firefly—into a poignant symbol of ecological fragility. Visitors enter a darkened space where a swarm of kinetic sculptures, resembling glowing fireflies, twirl and flicker. These luminous orbs perform a ritualistic dance—an imitation of the natural mating choreography of fireflies, creatures that rely on light signals to find partners.
Artistic performers in their own right, fireflies are, however, more than a visual spectacle. In the wild, their chemical reaction emits a bioluminescent glow which is loaded with meaning: desire, safety and communication. In Choreography in the Void, this rhythm is preserved but perverted. The fireflies flicker not with intention, but with instruction. What was once natural instinct is now imitation through human intervention.
This kinetic installation stages a surreal ballet of artificial insects whose mating rituals unfold not in the wild but in the calculated precision of engineered light and movement. Stilted and mechanical, nature and its organic spontaneity submit to the engineered pulse of machines ticking in time. It’s choreography without life—a ritual stripped of whims and unpredictabilities. Acciardi’s artificial swarm becomes a metaphor for a future in which nature has been hollowed out, replaced by synthetic proxies. The installation doesn’t just mimic fireflies—it mourns their absence
Acciardi transforms this intimate ritual into a collective experience, one that viewers are invited to observe but never participate in. The distance is intentional. The viewer is isolate from the rituals of natural life, watching an imitation of it unfold. Viewers appreciate a performative beauty in the motion, but it is beauty laced with loss. The viewer becomes a witness to a ritual that should not exist, an eerie echo of something once alive.
The tension between humanity and nature is palpable. Acciardi doesn’t present us with a dystopia outright, but with a quiet warning: as we continue to manipulate and control the natural world, we risk reducing nature's ceremonies to a shell of itself—a simulation, a prosthetic. The installation asks whether our fascination with nature’s beauty has become incompatible, where we no longer coexist with the natural world, but haphazardly reproduce it under our own terms.
In a society racing forward, building fast and growing exponentially, Acciardi's work is a gentle yet urgent call to pause. “I hope to inspire visitors to rethink how we coexist with nature in a rapidly evolving society,” he says. Choreography in the Void creates a space for contemplation, for mourning, and perhaps for reimagining. It challenges us to question what kind of relationship we want with the natural world: one of harmony, or one of control. Through this ceremonious spectacle, Acciardi delivers a quiet but pressing reminder: nature and its rituals, once vibrant and autonomous, is being reshaped by human hands into something ornamental, lifeless, and mechanical.
Daan Roosegaarde, The Netherlands
Acciardi showed us that mechanics and the human touch can oftentimes be hazardous to the rituals of nature, but can they also be collaborative and non-evasive? Daan Roosegaarde's SPARK (2022) is more than an artwork—it’s a response to the climate crisis, a poetic reinvention of traditional celebrations, and a shining gesture towards a future in balance with nature.
Set against the expansive Riyadh night sky, SPARK is a spectacle guided by sensibility. Gracefully, it removes itself from the familiar ceremony of traditional fireworks, whose fleeting beauty often comes at the cost of heavy air pollution and the unsettling of local wildlife. Rather than a loud combustion of fuels and metals, SPARK is made of floating, luminous bubbles that absorb and reflect ambient light, therefore making it silent and biodegradable. The installation moves like a murmuration, animated with its own breath and flow. It's an ritual that doesn’t compromise the environment but collaborates with it.
In an interview with Roosegaarde, we talked about SPARK's relevance to the rising contemporary art scene in Saudi Arabia as opposed to the familiar and recognised rituals of the Western art world. For centuries, Europe set the standard for what was considered innovative, valuable, and culturally significant in art. But today, those traditions risk becoming stagnant. Roosegaarde sees a compelling contrast in Saudi Arabia’s ongoing transformation and its Vision 2030 initiative. Where Europe risks being an “open-air museum,” he points to cities like Riyadh as places where art, technology, and environmental responsibility are actively shaping the future for societies as well as the art world. In this context, SPARK is more than an art installation—it’s a living lab for reimagining future urban celebration and ceremonies.
The two-year journey to SPARK was however, by Roosegaarde’s account, alchemical. A hybrid team of artists, engineers, and thinkers underwent cycles of prototyping, failing, re-editing. Here, failure is reinterpreted as 'food'—each mistake feeding and contributing to the work’s evolution. This process in it itself becomes a ritual, a ceremonial act of sharing mistakes and brainstorming ideas.
The central question of SPARK is potent: how do we honour tradition without harming the future? Riyadh faces its own problems with city pollution, where light is paradoxically both a source of problem and promise. With temperatures set to rise by four degrees by 2030, the city’s rituals must adapt. Roosegaarde tells me that in other installations of SPARK, he successfully collaborated with local governments to turn all the lights off in a city to raise awareness about the environment and light pollution. 'Light is a universal language after all, it's just how it is applied'. Spark challenges us to consider what ceremonies look like in a world where nature can no longer be taken for granted. Roosegaarde confronts our rituals rooted in traditions —fireworks, urban light pollution, disconnected celebrations—and replaces them with something that is both ancient and avant-garde. He reinvents the language of ceremony. This is not imitation—it is, as Roosegaarde puts it, copy morph, not copy paste.
Roosegaarde's philosophy is one of quiet rebellion. In an age of digital excess and advancing technologies, where art often risks becoming an extension of screen culture, SPARK combines science and engineering with a human touch of stillness, wonder, and reflection. Children, families and strangers can interact with SPARK; they can walk under it, into it, even touch it. There’s no pedestal, no white cube gallery setting with the typical four walls. Just a ceremony of intimacy, accessibility, and tender moments under the night sky, out in the open for everyone.
Random International, United Kingdom
All together, together but alone; Roosegaarde's viewers assemble in unison to share a ceremony bathed in ethereal light, but with light there is also darkness. Viewers meander and pass each other with the added comfort and safety of the night sky, allowing a sense of anonymity and invisibility. In contrast, Random International's Alone Together (2024) is an immersive installation studying self exposure, reimagining the very act of being seen as a ceremonial experience.
In Riyadh's King Abdulaziz Historical Centre, the work transforms the architectural site into a ceremonial stage that is alive and animated. Occupying a 10x10x4 metre open-air space, Alone Together uses tracking sensors and algorithmically driven beams of intense light that coalesce into an 'organism', selecting participants at random. With its unpredictable rhythm and seemingly sentient behaviour, Alone Together subjects individuals to bright, unwavering attention—an unsettling yet oddly seductive rite of visibility. In doing so, it confronts a core human paradox: we long to be noticed, but fear being truly seen.
For this reason, the installation casts more than just light—it projects a profound commentary on modern rituals, identity, and the elusive desire to be truly seen. But it also raises a pressing question - does it matter how or who we are seen by? An agent without a face, the spotlight comes alive—simultaneously worshipping yet interrogating its subject. The artwork’s pursuit is both intimate and evasive: the light lingers near its chosen subject, trailing them yet never confronting directly. In response, the participants are drawn into a dynamic theatre of exposure and evasion, where the individual performs, is observed, and subject to scrutiny. It's a ceremony of worship, but the deity is digital.
Yet the question lingers: is this a celebration of the individual or a trial by spotlight? In a world saturated with visibility, the installation exposes a modern paradox: the fear of being watched and the longing to be noticed. The system’s randomised selection strips the viewer of agency, turning human participation into a ceremonial lottery. You are seen, not because you asked to be, but because a machine chose you. And once chosen, your presence becomes central, however briefly, in the flickering consciousness of the installation.
In an era dominated by CCTV and digital surveillance, Alone Together’s impermanence sharply contrasts with the data-driven systems we’ve come to accept as normal. Unlike data tracking or algorithmic profiling, Alone Together imposes no judgment and carries no consequences. In a brief exchange between human bodies and digital code, the algorithm selects us, the sensors follow us. But each ceremonial 'spotlight' is new and untouched by previous bouts of data.The ritual of surveillance is reimagined as a gift — the experience of being seen without being possessed — a refreshing perspective in a world where data is increasingly commodified and controlled.
As we move toward increasingly intelligent digital systems, the question of how we relate to them grows more pressing. Alone Together doesn’t claim to provide definitive answers, but it brings the question to life in a luminous, stage-lit way. It suggests that the future of ritual may not reside in temples or sacred texts, but in light where we discover ceremony, or in randomness where we can unexpectedly uncover ritual.
Ayman Yossri Daydban, Palestine & Saudi Arabia
While Random International explores public appearances and feeling 'seen', White Noise (2016) by Ayman Yossri Daydban invites viewers to look inwards — through the ritual acts of walking, of listening, of remembering. Displayed in a city that pulses with bright light, bustling traffic and sweltering heat, Daydban’s salt-laden sanctuary offers something different: a ceremony not of outward display and intensity, but of mindful solitude and isolation.
The installation—a darkened room filled with nearly two tons of salt—resists the seduction of spectacle. Here, the ritual is internal, somatic, and slow. The audience is not asked to look, but to feel. Their task is deceptively simple: walk. With shoes or without. Each crunch of salt beneath foot becomes both a sound and a signal—an echo of a moment that is permanent but also fleeting. The ritual unfolds not in a church, nor a mosque, nor a temple; there is no public ceremony at play. Instead, it happens in the body, through repetition and rhythm, like breath in meditation.
Entering White Noise, the experience recalls the metaphorical 'seas of salt' explored by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in 'Kafka on the Shore'. In this landmark, the soul dissolves and rebirths itself. If this type of ritual is a tool to enter altered states, then White Noise constructs one from the soils of Saudi itself. In local contexts, salt is a symbol of purity and cleansing. A creative vessel to enter a journey of solitude and touching base with the body's ancient memory, White Noise goes beyond first impressions that salt is a simple and base material.
Ultimately, White Noise stands as a deeply local work that transcends its material simplicity. It allows for the act of walking to become sacred, the sound of salt underfoot to become scripture. And in doing so, Daydban crafts a ritual not for the collective, but for the self. Quiet. Unshared. Remembered.
Daydban’s ceremony is therefore a choreography gently navigated that is not forced upon the viewer. Each viewer moves through the room with their own rhythm, their own weight, their own silence. But the work is also a critique. In posing the question—“When was the last time you heard the crunch of your shoes walking on salt?”— Daydban underscores a disconnection between modern living and self awareness. In a world of curated identities, overstimulation, and rituals clouted by algorithms, White Noise becomes a stripped-down ceremony that reminds us of basic human needs: solitude, touch, reflection.
What makes White Noise ceremonial is that it creates a space where certain states of the self are not just allowed, but necessary. This is what Daydban calls 'The State'—not a nation or system, but a mode of being. In a society where so many rituals are inherited or imposed from generation to generation, Daydban offers a rare one: a ritual of self-discovery, a ceremony without instruction.
A.A Murakami , UK & Japan
Every evening, as the sun disappears beyond the horizon, we unknowingly participate in one of the oldest rituals in human history—marking the end of a day and the beginning of another. For the ancient Egyptians, this daily rhythm was immortalised by Ra, the sun deity, whose voyage across the sky by day and through the underworld by night symbolised the eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
Exclusive to Noor Riyadh 2024, artist duo A.A. Murakami reinterpreted this ancient mythology through cutting-edge technology in their multimedia installation, The Passage of Ra (2024). Drawing directly from Ra’s cosmic journey, the mythology is rendered through the artists’ own conceptual framework, what they term “Ephemeral Tech.” It’s an artistic approach that explores how the abstract digital world can be made manifest in physical space—and how technology, often seen as cold or impersonal, can be a vehicle for spiritual reflection.
The installation features a projected digital seascape, towards which fog rings are released. These rings drift gently toward the screen using technology developed exclusively by A.A. Murakami and not replicable by others. As they vanish into thin air upon contact, their forms reappear in the digital ocean, continuing their journey into a virtual horizon. The transformation is seamless and surreal—a physical breath becoming a digital echo. Just as Ra crosses from one realm to the next, the fog rings transcend physical reality, living on as NFTs in the blockchain: ephemeral in the real world, permanent in the digital one.
Ancient civilisations marked their rituals with monolithic structures, pyramids, and temples to track the sun or honour deities. In The Passage of Ra, A.A. Murakami use the newest tools of our time—blockchain, projection mapping, atmospheric engineering—to honour the same natural rituals that fascinated our ancestors. Each fog ring released into the installation is like a prayer or offering, a fleeting presence soon gone—but preserved in another form. The viewer, too, becomes part of the ritual, watching this delicate cycle unfold in real time, conscious of its impermanence yet captivated by its persistence. The result is therefore not just an art installation, but a new kind of ceremonial space, where viewers can witness the evolution of rituals in a hybrid world.
We are, as A.A. Murakami suggest, temporary gatherings of particles—brief flashes of life passing through time. The fog rings reflect more than just water vapour; they embody the fragility of human existence. And yet, as the artwork shows, technology gives us a new kind of permanence. In the context of The Passage of Ra, it poses a subtle question: Is it possible to capture and keep the spirit, meaning, or presence of something ritualistic, even after its physical form disappears? Can the digital world become a vessel for its memory?
The Passage of Ra is then also a case study in contrast—between what vanishes and what lives on. While the fog rings last only seconds in our world, their NFT counterparts become part of a blockchain archive, eternally looping through a digital sea. It’s a poignant metaphor for our current cultural condition: the tension between our transient lives and our growing desire to be remembered, preserved, immortalised through technology.
The artists are aware of this dichotomy. “If I’m experiencing technology through something on a screen, it exists in a different dimension to myself,” says Alexander Groves, one half of the duo. “It’s in a dimension that can’t age.” It offers a glimpse into a future where rituals are no longer tied to stones and incense, but to code and configurations. It also nods to future spirituality, and how it could potentially align with technology in search of the wider 'truth' rather than pulling us away from it. In a space where myth, matter, and metadata collide, A.A. Murakami remind us that rituals—like the sun’s rising and setting—are never obsolete. They are simply waiting to be reimagined.
Conclusion
So why does public art resonate so deeply with our human need for rituals and ceremonies? At its core, public art is made for people. It gathers communities, fosters shared experiences, and becomes a space where collective memory, belief, and connection are formed. These are the same ingredients found in rituals—moments that mark time, identity, and meaning.
The act of creating and experiencing art is itself an ancient ritual—one that hasn’t changed since the first cave paintings or ivory carvings tens of thousands of years ago. Today, artists still search for meaning, exhibitions continue to evolve, murals fill new city walls, and sculptures rise in public spaces—testament to the endurance of artistic expression and coming together.
As the traditional white-cube gallery grows increasingly disconnected from broader audiences, public art steps in to democratise the experience. Art in public spaces is no longer reserved for those trained in art history or those with easy access to creative spaces; it now invites everyone in.
What makes public art powerful is its duality: it can bring together communities in shared celebration, or quietly invite personal reflection. At Noor Riyadh 2024, we’ve seen how public art—on a grand or intimate scale— can turn ordinary spaces into sites of ceremony, offering us not just something to look at, but something to feel, remember, and carry forward.
Ella Forster
Curatorial Supervisor & Coordinator
During Noor Riyadh, Ella was a Curatorial Supervisor & Coordinator, engaging across all departments from operations to shipping. Working closely with curators Neville Wakefield and Maya Al Athel, she provided guidance on design and technical aspects, overseeing both installation and deinstallation while maintaining thorough documentation. With close communication with all 30 artists, Ella also warmly greeted their arrival during the opening week, ensuring their stay in Riyadh was comfortable and memorable.