Contemporary Sculptures Rise Beside Egypt’s Ancient Pyramids

The thousands-year-old pyramids of the Giza Plateau are reason enough to visit the stretch of golden desert, southwest of Cairo’s city center. Part of an astonishing necropolis, complete with a dazzling sphinx, and dating from 2600-2500 BC, they rise sharply to the sky—works of geometric and architectural perfection. But until December 6, there will be another, more contemporary attraction to behold as new works by artists from ten countries have been installed on the plateau. Large-scale outdoor sculptures range from a careful accumulation of ancient city doors by the Portuguese Alexandre Fato—portals from past to present—to a glimmering installation of aluminum pipes by Brazilian talent Ana Ferrari, designed to murmur softly in the wind. 

The final spot, nearest to the Pyramids themselves, is taken by Michelangelo Pistoletto, the internationally celebrated 92-year-old Italian artist. His work, called The Third Paradise, has appeared around the world in various iterations since it was first conceived in 2003 (including as a permanent planting of 121 olive trees in a double infinity loop in Assisi, Italy). Here, it manifests as a ring of limestone blocks around a primeval obelisk that appears to have floated down to the desert plateau like a gentle piece of land art—a soft circular response to the pyramids’ pointy prowess. “The Pyramids,” says Pistoletto, “symbolize the eternal desire for immortality and knowledge.” His Third Paradise—harmoniously concentric—proposes a collective responsibility for a better, conflict-free world.   

This is the fifth edition of “Forever is Now,” devised by Nadine Abdel Ghaffar, the French-Egyptian curator and founder of Art D’Egypte, an initiative dedicated to delivering art experiences with a difference. “The idea to bring work to the desert was just a dream, a vision,” she says. “Now it’s become a global dialogue about hope, transcendence and the enduring power of human creativity.” A tall order, perhaps, but there’s nowhere better than a backdrop of pyramids as an advert for the last. 

The U.S.-based artist Alex Proba was looking in quite another direction when she received an invitation from Abdel Ghaffar to participate in the program’s 2025 round. “We were already exploring a few project ideas, including one in San Francisco, when I was invited by Nadine to propose a work,” says the Galerie Creative Mind artist, known for exuberantly abstract works ranging from rug designs to large public sculptures.

“Usually my large-scale works are made in steel and fiberglass, combined with resin, foams and special coatings. But here I wanted to address the deeply historic site that has structures built in stone and is shaped by geological time.” She immediately contacted David Mahyari, the founder of SolidNature, a Dutch company specializing in stone, for assistance. “He knows how to work with the natural veining, color, and mass of the material,” Proba explains. “But he also has a sense of curiosity which matches my own. He wants to push boundaries and do the unexpected.”

Now, Proba’s three-part artwork dances in front of the three pyramids of Giza, her abstract but strangely anthropomorphic forms carved from solid blocks of red travertine, green onyx, and brilliant blue sodalite. One sculpture interprets the Eye of Horus, its “lashes” rendered in vivid green Indian marble. Another offers up a ring, like a portal or a sun. Waving fronds, in pink granite, are reminiscent of a Matisse cut-out. “I wasn’t interested in literal motifs,” says Proba, who was unable to attend the grand opening on November 12, having given birth a few months earlier. “But I thought deeply about the symbolic and emotional essence of Egyptian visual culture—the balance between earthly life and the divine.”  

While Proba designed the sculptures in New York, SolidNature applied its expertise to carving them at its Dutch workshops, initially using a five-arm CnC machine, before finishing each part painstakingly by hand. The company is best known for providing sheet stone for upscale architectural projects, and working with designers including Sabine Marcelis and OMA on innovative interior ideas. “Here, we were working with solid stone, but always off-cuts, so there was no wastage,” explains the 33-year-old Mahyari. “When you cut into the stone, you don’t know what’s inside.” Here, under the Egyptian sun, the beauty of its natural veining is fully revealed and the colors change dramatically each time a cloud passes over.  

Elsewhere along the sculpture trail, King Houndekpinkou, an artist from Benin and France, has mounted a soaring totem of white porcelain shards. “I had chosen to work locally, at an industrial porcelain factory in Sheeni near Cairo, when everything exploded in the kiln,” says Houndekpinkou. “I decided to rescue the pieces and build this tower instead; to turn disaster into success. The pyramids were a huge collaborative effort and so was this. It became a contemplation on the rhythm of life and the act of making.”  

The Korean artist J. Park has turned instead to technology to create a meditative experience that imagines a conversation between the founder of the ancient Korean peninsula and the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. His triangular structure, encrypted with the phone numbers and identities of myriad individuals, is a reminder of the richness of information provided by Egyptian hieroglyphics and the fact that history is always in the making.  

While the pyramids have lasted over centuries, these new installations will soon be gone, leaving as little imprint as possible on this precious desert ground. “I would love my work to go to another public place,” says Proba. “Ideally, somewhere that holds its own sense of history, but also a place where people get to encounter the sculptures as part of everyday life.” After all, in Egypt, that is just what the pyramids—symbols of eternity—have become.