The ancient and the contemporary meet once again at the Giza Plateau. Returning for its fifth edition, Forever Is Now 05—the flagship exhibition by Art D’Egypte—continues its mission to bridge 4,500 years of history through site-specific contemporary art installations. Set against the backdrop of the Pyramids of Giza until Dec. 6, the 2025 edition brings together artists from across the world to explore themes of immortality, legacy, and the human desire to endure beyond time.
Founded by Nadine Abdel Ghaffar, Forever Is Now has established itself as one of the most distinctive art events in the Middle East. Each year, it invites artists to create new works that engage directly with one of the world’s most storied heritage sites—a place that has captivated travelers, historians, and dreamers for millennia.
This year’s edition takes its cue from ancient Egyptian cosmology and craftsmanship, examining how humanity has long grappled with the idea of eternity. Artists are asked to reflect on patterns found in hieroglyphs, ceremonial objects, and even the stars—symbols that once expressed cycles of life, death, and rebirth. Through sculptural interventions, large-scale installations, and the use of new technologies, participating artists reinterpret these motifs for the modern age.
Read on for the participating artists:
Alex Proba and SolidNature
German-born, New York–based multidisciplinary artist Alex Proba brings her signature language of bold color and playful abstraction to the ancient sands of Giza. Known for transforming public spaces through immersive design, Proba joins forces with SolidNature, the Dutch luxury stone atelier, to create Echoes of the Infinite — a sculptural installation exploring time, memory, and transformation.
Composed of three monumental stone forms crafted from marble, onyx, and sandstone, the installation shifts in perception as viewers move around it: from certain angles, the sculptures align into a single harmonious structure, recalling the geometric precision of the pyramids. Embedded within the stone are motifs of the blue lotus, the scarab, and the Milky Way — symbols of rebirth, cosmic balance, and eternal cycles drawn from ancient Egyptian belief.
Ana Ferrari
Brazilian artist Ana Ferrari brings her fascination with sound, vibration, and the invisible forces of nature to the Giza Plateau with Wind, a sculptural installation that transforms air into melody. Comprising 21 polished aluminum flutes arranged in a spiral, the work turns the desert breeze into its only musician, producing a natural symphony of shifting tones.
Rooted in Ferrari’s research into cymatics—the study of visible sound vibrations—each flute carries a precisely tuned note etched with laser technology, revealing intricate patterns that reference ancient Egyptian understandings of resonance and sacred geometry. The spiral formation, one of humanity’s oldest symbols of wind, reflects both motion and continuity, while the mirrored metal surfaces capture the viewer alongside the pyramids and sky.
Jongkyu Park
Hailing from Korea, Jongkyu Park brings his long-running exploration of “digital noise” to the sands of Giza in Code of the Eternal, a sculptural work that fuses technology, mythology, and geometry. Known for transforming glitches, pixels, and visual errors into painterly compositions, Park extends his digital language into the physical landscape, reimagining the pyramid as both an ancient monument and an encrypted message.
At its center stands a triangular steel structure framed within a square, its proportions derived from the dimensions of the pyramids. Embedded within it are the encrypted identities and phone numbers of hundreds of people, a contemporary echo of the mysteries once sealed within tombs. Surrounding the structure are nearly 1,000 mirrored steel dots that shimmer under the desert sun — fragments of digital “noise” reborn as sacred pattern. Together, they form a Morse-like code that connects past, present, and future.
King Houndekpinkou
Franco-Beninese ceramic artist King Houndekpinkou continues his cross-cultural exploration of spirituality and materiality with White Totem of Light, a striking sculptural work that bridges Benin’s Vodun traditions, Japanese Shinto influences, and Egypt’s ancient landscape. Known for transforming clay into vessels of cultural memory, Houndekpinkou draws from his dual heritage and his deep apprenticeship with Japanese potters to create a piece that meditates on protection, beauty, and the sacred.
The sculpture’s surface is etched with intricate handmade patterns inspired by the natural defense systems found in flora and organic life—reminders that beauty in nature often coexists with resilience and survival. Its textured skin recalls the layered surfaces of Vodun altars in Benin, where ritual offerings accumulate over time to form spiritual palimpsests.
Mert Ege Köse
Turkish sculptor Mert Ege Köse, known for his monumental metal works, draws from one of Egypt’s most enduring symbols—the Shen, emblem of eternity and divine protection—for his new installation on the Giza Plateau. A master of aluminum and alloy, Köse translates the Shen’s continuous loop into sleek, fluid forms that embody both permanence and flow.
In The Shen, each curve and contour mirrors the rhythm of the natural world, balancing structure with spontaneity. The reflective surfaces, rendered in smooth, industrial metal, distort the desert horizon and invite the viewer to step inside an abstract meditation on infinity. Like the ancient symbol itself, Köse’s work speaks of unity and wholeness, suggesting that even in the precision of modern craftsmanship lies the same search for order that guided the ancients.
Michelangelo Pistoletto
One of the founding figures of the Arte Povera movement, Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto brings his globally recognized symbol The Third Paradise (Il Terzo Paradiso) to the Giza Plateau. Conceived as a reconfiguration of the mathematical infinity sign, Pistoletto’s emblem adds a third circle at its center, representing a new phase of humanity that reconciles nature and technology to create a sustainable, responsible civilization.
Constructed from marble scraps sourced from quarries and workshops around the world, the installation connects past, present, and future. These discarded fragments — once remnants of industrial excess — are reimagined as building blocks of regeneration. Within this framework, Pistoletto’s “Formula of Creation,” expressed as 1 + 1 = 3, defines art as the space where two forces meet to generate a third: relationship, renewal, and balance.
Nadim Karam
Lebanese artist and architect Nadim Karam brings his signature blend of storytelling, symbolism, and urban-scale sculpture to Giza with Desert Flowers— three monumental lotus-like forms rising from the sand. Each flower, assembled from recycled metal scraps and remnants of Karam’s earlier works, embodies a dialogue between memory and transformation, inviting reflection on how history decides which stories endure and which are lost to time.
The installation unfolds in three stages: Rebirth, a closed bud of jagged metal; Sun, a partially open flower catching the light; and Creation, a full bloom; a visual metaphor for emergence and renewal. The lotus, once abundant in ancient Egypt and revered as a symbol of life and creation, reappears here not in water but in desert dust, reborn from industrial waste.
Recycle Group
Recycle Group, the Paris-based artist duo comprised of Andrey Blokhin and Georgy Kuznetsov, continues their investigation into the collision between the physical and the digital with Null, a sculptural installation made from interwoven plastic mesh human figures. Known for their conceptual works that reinterpret spirituality in the age of the internet, the duo turns the ancient site of Giza into a meditation on the digital epoch and humanity’s shifting sense of reality.
In Null, the human body becomes both subject and symbol: figures appear suspended mid-motion, frozen in a translucent grid that evokes data networks and virtual entrapment. The use of plastic mesh—a material that conceals as much as it reveals—embodies the thin digital shell that defines modern existence. For Recycle Group, “zero” marks a new genesis, a reset of systems and a passage into what they call the “fourth digital dimension.”
Saleha El Masry
Egyptian artist and art critic Saleha El Masry reimagines one of ancient Egypt’s most profound symbols—Ma’at, the goddess of truth, justice, and cosmic order—in a powerful new installation that bridges the personal and the collective. Known for her ceramic works inspired by pre-dynastic and early Egyptian civilizations, El Masry brings her lifelong dialogue with history into the public sphere with Ma’at, transforming a royal artifact into a monument for the people.
The work takes the form of a monumental ring, inspired by a seal once belonging to an ancient king. Through this transformation, the object shifts from a symbol of authority and control into one of transparency and reflection. Positioned so that its circular opening frames the tip of the Great Pyramid, the ring acts as a lens through which the past becomes visible in the present.
Vhils
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Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, known globally as Vhils, brings his signature carving technique to Cairo with Doors of Cairo — a powerful meditation on memory, passage, and collective identity. For this installation, Vhils gathered old doors from across the city, each carrying traces of those who passed through them: quiet gestures, moments of reunion and separation, lives unfolding on both sides of a threshold.
Reassembled in the desert near the pyramids, these doors lose their original function and become symbolic gateways between past and present. Their weathered surfaces — carved with faces of ordinary people and etched with patterns reminiscent of Egyptian craftsmanship.
