Future of Nostalgia – Art Week Tokyo
Poster Image : Sarah Brahim, There Will Comme Soft Rain (2025)
Exhibition of AlUla Artist Residency Programme
From November 5th to November 16th, 2025
Future of Nostalgia is an exhibition presented during Art Week Tokyo, organized by Arts AlUla and the French Agency for AlUla Development
(AFALULA). It brings together 21 artists who have participated in the residency programmes of the ancient oasis city of AlUla, Saudi Arabia.
The exhibition Future of Nostalgia marks a new milestone in AlUla’s international influence and contributes to positioning it within the global exchanges of contemporary creation.
By bringing together artists, curators, and international partners, it highlights the scope of one-of-a-kind destination and cultural initiative — one that fosters the circulation of expertise, the emergence of new artistic practices, and the connection of AlUla with major cultural capitals in the world. This exhibition also marks a milestone in the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Japan. Over seven decades, the two nations have built a deep and enduring partnership founded on mutual respect, cultural exchange, and shared aspirations for innovation and progress. The presentation of Future of Nostalgia during this anniversary year reflects that spirit of collaboration, celebrating the creative dialogue between Saudi and Japanese art scenes and the enduring bond between both nations.
Bringing together artists who have lived and worked in AlUla, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, through its residency programme, the exhibition approaches the oasis, its original context of creation, as a palimpsest where geology, oral histories, archeological sites, and emerging technologies overlap. Since 2021, the AlUla Artist Residency Programme has invited artists to narrate this place into presence. In this exceptional setting, whose history spans millennia, archaeological traces of pre-Islamic civilisations coexist with the tangible and symbolic influences of the Arab world. Basalt and sandstone preserve the marks of ancient rites and millennia-old pilgrimages; palm groves veil the remains of earlier settlements; cliffs and deserts carved by volcanoes, seas, and winds, now meet and harmonize with urban ambitions turned toward the future, standing at the threshold of utopia.
* Arts AlUla is the arts and creative industries arm of the Royal Commission for AlUla.