Ibrahim El-Salahi

Ibrahim El-Salahi's style changes, but he keeps working on one particular theme inspired by a tree, an Acacia locally called the Haraza that grows on the banks of the Nile. During the rainy season the tree is leafless, and it blossoms with freshly budding green leaves when the weather turns dry and the river flows at its lowest towards the sea. Through all, the tree remains steadfast, silently watching over the passage of seasons and time.

El-Salahi started his ongoing 'Tree series' around the turn of the millennium, with the first sculpture being realised in 2018 based on his pen and ink drawing, Meditation Tree. It has long been his ambition to realise a forest of these 'Tree' sculptures in which the individual and the collective exist in harmony, the repetition in three-dimensional form embodying his vision of a forest where unity emerges from multiplicity, in which the individual and the collective exist in harmony. One tree is represented many times in the same form to represent the many aspects of the great human society. The only differences are in colours and cultures, but we are basically all the same. Of the same origin with the many representing the one. He sees the series as an ongoing investigation of the tree/body metaphor, a link between heaven and earth, creator and created.

Desert X AlUla 2026 was curated by Wejdan Reda and Zoé Whitley, under the vision of Founding Artistic Director Neville Wakefield and returning 2026 Artistic Director Raneem Farsi. Commissioned by the Royal Commission for AlUla.

The exhibition brought together 11 artists whose diverse and monumental works reflect a wide spectrum of ideas, materials and traditions. From monumental kinetic sculpture to sound-based explorations above and below ground, each commission is deeply rooted in relationships to AlUla’s dynamic and distinctive environment.