DAYDREAM, 2021
KAFD Conference Center Outdoor Plaza | Riyadh | Noor festival 2021

The sun and the moon. These celestial bodies, the two faces of the cycle of light, are the inspiration for the artworks created by Robert Wilson for Noor Riyadh 2021. In DAYDREAM, the moon, cosmic cauldron of light, irradiates and spreads its peaceful incandescence onto civilization, as the echo of a guardian spirit. Emerging from darkness, it fills the distance between infinity and the world, thus uniting space and time – a bridge for humanity. DAYDREAM is a radiant sculpture illuminated to create a visual sequence of light. The artwork, even when seen from a distance, appears as a pulsating element, inviting the audience to walk to it, as if its shape, colors and materials were acting as a catalyst, as a magnetic entity.

PALACE OF LIGHT, 2021
At-Turaif World Heritage Site | Riyadh | Noor festival 2021

Whether he is directing an opera or a play or designing a work for the theater or for a public space, Robert Wilson always starts with light. Without light, there is no space. Wilson has often said that time is a vertical line from the center of the earth to the heavens, and space is an endless horizontal line. This cross between time and space, this tension between the vertical and the horizontal, is the basic architecture of everything. Reflecting on time, space, light, and the unique landscape of At-Turaif, Wilson has designed PALACE OF LIGHT, an installation that consists of two major elements. On the one hand, numerous individual light sources, or light gems, pulsing like stars, interacting with a silver sea that works as a reflective surface during the day and creates patterns on the adjacent façade when lit at night. On the other, a large copper dish rising from the sea, an artificial sun, juxtaposed to the moon of DAYDREAM, Wilson’s other work for Noor Riyadh 2021. A heartbeat in the desert – irradiating life – a light installation in constant evolution, testifying to both the fragility and resilience of life.