As Tokyo’s art scene reaches its most dynamic moment of the year with Art Week Tokyo, Warehouse TERRADA opens its doors to “Future of Nostalgia,” an exhibition presented by Arts AlUla and the French Agency for AlUla Development (AFALULA), curated by Arnaud Morand and Ali Alghazzawi. Running from November 5 to 16, 2025, the show brings together 21 international artists who have all taken part in AlUla’s residency program in Saudi Arabia—a unique creative ecosystem born at the crossroads of heritage, archaeology, know-how, and contemporary vision.
The title, borrowed from cultural theorist Svetlana Boym’s seminal text, captures the exhibition’s spirit: nostalgia not as a sentimental return, but as a sentiment capable of shaping societies both in their present form and possible futures. Here, the artists—including Bianca Bondi, Sarah Brahim, Théo Mercier, Yasmina Benabderrahmane, Han Mengyun, Ugo Schiavi, and Anhar Salem—navigate time as a layered terrain where memory, imagination, oblivion, and context converge. Across installations, sculptures, photographs, and digital works, they explore how the residues of the past can be rewritten into visions of tomorrow that are open to debate. They question our perception of reality and how time alters it.
Rewriting Time Through Art and Collaboration
Exhibition view “Future of Nostalgia,” 2025 © Timothee Lambrecq.
For curator Arnaud Morand, nostalgia becomes an active mode of creation. “It’s not about recovering a fixed past or forecasting a monolithic future,” he explains. “It’s about staging the present as a palimpsest where traces of what has been and what could be continually collide – it is more about the what if rather than the what is.” In this, Future of Nostalgia embraces the paradox of AlUla itself: a landscape where basalt and sandstone preserve millennia-old inscriptions while new ideas and technologies transform its horizon.
The exhibition also marks the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Japan, underscoring the dialogue between the two nations, rooted in tradition yet oriented toward innovation. The selection of artists reflects that ethos — cosmopolitan, interdisciplinary, and deeply reflective. Each work is both personal and collective, intimate and planetary, evoking how our understanding of heritage and progress can coexist without opposition. As stated by Hamad A. Alhomiedan, Arts & Creative Industries Director at the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU): “The exhibition reflects RCU’s ambitions — to create bridges between cultures, to celebrate imagination as a force for transformation, and to ensure that AlUla’s creative industries contribute meaningfully to the global conversation on contemporary art.”
AlUla’s Global Resonance
Exhibition view “Future of Nostalgia,” Hugo Servanin, “Géant 45,” 2024, “Géant 46,” 2024, “Géant 47,” 2024,
Sofiane Si Merabet, “IT’S NOT EARLY ANYMORE,” 2021, Video triptych Produced with the support of
Arts AlUla and AFALULA, Collection of the Royal Commission for AlUla, Courtesy of the artist.
Since its creation in 2021 by Arts AlUla and AFALULA, the AlUla Artist Residency Programme has become a beacon for cross-cultural exchange, inviting over fifty artists and designers to live and work in the oasis city. Set among palm groves and ancient rock formations, it provides time and context for experimentation, encouraging creators to engage with geology, ecology, and the local community. As AlGhazzawi describes it, “Contemporary creation rooted in AlUla is never solitary — it’s part of a wider movement linking Saudi Arabia with global networks of cultural production.”
After “Orbis Tertius” was presented in Paris in 2024, “Future of Nostalgia” crystallizes this movement in Tokyo, offering visitors a rare glimpse into how art can traverse geography and temporality. The works on view don’t just revisit memory; they expand it — proposing a new form of belonging that transcends borders and epochs.
In a world racing toward the next innovation, this exhibition invites us to pause — to see the present as the meeting ground between remembrance and reinvention.
Exhibition view “Future of Nostalgia,” 2025 © Timothee Lambrecq.
Exhibition view “Future of Nostalgia,” 2025 © Timothee Lambrecq.
Exhibition view “Future of Nostalgia,” M’hammed Kilito, “Untitled [n°1 to 15],” 2022 Untold Tales series,
Produced with the support of Arts AlUla and AFALULA Courtesy of the artist © Timothee Lambrecq.
“Future of Nostalgia”
Warehouse TERRADA G3-6F, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo
November 5–16, 2025
Curated by Arnaud Morand and Ali Alghazzawi
Presented by Arts AlUla and AFALULA
