A one-of-a-kind event, Forever Is Now is organised by Art D’Égypte/Culturvator — a cultural consultancy platform dedicated to promoting Egyptian art internationally — under the patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, and the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, and held in collaboration with UNESCO.
Founder of Art D’Égypte, Nadine Abdel Ghaffar, explained to Ahram Online that the exhibition’s role is to promote cultural tourism and encourage visitors to discover both Egypt’s ancient and modern identities. This is done with awareness of protecting the archaeological site, with additional layers of sand placed beneath each artwork.
Visitors encounter sculptures and installations that explore the concept of eternity, connecting past and present, hope and transcendence.
The artworks are carefully positioned to harmonize with the majestic view of the three Pyramids of Giza, creating spaces where cultures intersect and time periods converge through creativity.
Eternity, memory, and harmony
Michelangelo Pistoletto, the Italian artist renowned for his mirror works and socially driven projects, presents The Third Paradise, a sculpture that unites nature and the industrial world through an adapted infinity symbol, reflecting his creation formula (1 + 1 = 3).
Made from recycled marble sourced globally, the piece embodies cultural interconnectedness and regeneration. It conveys a message of preventive peace and renewal, reinforced by Pistoletto’s nomination for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for promoting social and planetary harmony through art.
Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, known as “Vhils,” creates large-scale urban portraits by carving into walls, revealing beauty and exploring human memory and identity. His artwork Cairo Doors consists of doors collected from Cairo’s streets, carrying gestures and memories of meetings, partings, quiet moments, and untold stories.
These doors are transformed into a temporary monument, bridging past and present.
Vhils transforms reclaimed doors from Cairo’s streets into a temporary monument that reveals layers of individual and collective memory within the city. By removing them from their original function and placing them in the desert, the doors become thresholds between past and present.
The Shen, an artwork by Turkish artist Mert Ege Köse, is a polished aluminum ring that captures sunlight, casts shadows, and lets the wind whisper the rest of the story.
Inspired by the ancient Shen symbol, it embodies infinity, perfection, and divine protection, with a repeated motif reflecting an eternal cycle of interconnectedness that unites individual elements into a harmonious whole.
Carefully balancing order and freedom, Köse’s monumental sculpture mirrors the complexity of the natural world, towering over viewers and inviting a purely abstract, reflective experience.
Digital realities and poetic memory
Another artwork symbolizing the birth of a new digital age, resetting ancient systems and presenting zero as an alternative to traditional temporal symbols, is titled Null, which depicts human figures made from plastic mesh: hollow digital bodies suspended within the space of the internet. The installation reflects how the virtual world increasingly consumes us and profoundly alters our perception of reality.
Null is presented by the artistic duo Recycle Group, Andrey Blokhin (France), and Georgy Kuznetsov (Russia), who explore through their work the balance between recycled materials and new technologies.
Korean artist Jongkyu Park’s artwork Code of the Eternal uses digital noise as a visual language, extracting beauty and order from technological chaos.
The work reveals a hidden tension between humans and technology while symbolically bridging Korea and Egypt through an encoded message spanning time and place.
Park envisions a dialogue between Korea’s legendary founder Dangun and an Egyptian pharaoh, creating a narrative that transcends time and connects the two cultures through a shared longing for eternity. The installation is built around a triangular structure within a square, encoded with identities and phone numbers, reflecting hidden messages like those within the Pyramids.
Around 1,000 stainless-steel mirror points shimmer as “digital noise,” forming a poetic message linking past, present, and future, with proportions inspired by the Great Pyramids.
The exhibition also features Echoes of Infinite by American multidisciplinary artist Alex Proba, who transforms everyday life and nature into immersive experiences through colourful murals, sculptures, and public installations.
The work is a trio of sculptural installations made of marble, agate, sandstone, and metal, creating a meditative exploration of time. Inspired by the visual harmony of the Pyramids, the sculptures shift between unity and dynamic contrasts of mass, void, light, and shadow, reflecting the Egyptian principle of Maat.
Symbols like the blue lotus, Milky Way, and scarab are incorporated, representing renewal, cosmic navigation, and eternal cycles, emphasising that matter holds human stories continually reshaped by time and perspective.
Desert Flowers, an artwork by Lebanese multidisciplinary sculptor Nadim Karam, consists of three sculptures emerging from the sand like lotus blossoms blooming in the desert near the Giza Pyramids. Each flower holds a heart filled with hidden stories and is crafted from metal scrap.
The work transforms discarded fragments and forgotten materials into sculptures that embody resilience and revive buried layers of history, merging official narratives with unheard voices.
Karam notes that Desert Flowers reflects the resonance of Egyptian history and invites reflection on how memory endures, stories fade, and life is continually reborn.
Sound, spirit, and cultural dialogue
Brazilian artist Anna Ferrari, who blends art, science, and spirituality to explore cosmic connections and vital energy, explains that exhibiting her artwork Wind at the Giza Pyramids transforms the invisible force of wind into a musical composition, echoing the ancient Egyptians’ reverence for sound and nature.
The installation consists of 21 aluminum flute pipes arranged in a spiral formation reflecting the timeless desert landscape, blending art, science, and spirituality. The work invites the audience to listen to the voice of nature in an experience that connects humanity to the universe across time.
French-Beninese ceramicist King Houndekpinkou describes his piece, White Totem of Light, as a fusion of craftsmanship and spiritual symbolism. Inspired by Beninese voodoo and Japanese Shinto, the sculpture is adorned with organic patterns that link beauty to protection and adaptation through layers of ritual and material.
Placed on the Giza Plateau, the sculpture creates a dialogue between African heritage, Japanese tradition, and Egyptian history, serving as a bridge between past and present, earth and cosmos, and reflecting on cultural preservation, identity, and the continuity of human stories.
Maat, presented by Egyptian visual and ceramic artist Salha Al-Masry, links ancient Egyptian art with contemporary expression, taking the form of a monumental ring whose circular opening frames the peak of the Pyramid, creating a window where past and present converge.
The piece transforms a royal ring from ancient Egypt into a public architectural form, shifting its meaning from a personal emblem of authority to a shared space for contemplating the principles of Maat: truth, justice, and cosmic order.
The ring’s surface is inscribed with ancient Egyptian texts from the Book of the Dead, carved using intaglio engraving, highlighting values such as dignity, bread, balance, and justice — principles considered essential for all, especially the vulnerable.
The fifth edition of Forever Is Now celebrates Egypt’s majestic past while exploring its place in global cultural heritage. Contemporary installations highlight the ongoing evolution of art alongside ancient enchantment.
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