Spectacle at the world’s oldest heritage site: If your social media feeds haven’t been flooded with Instagrammers and international celebrities like Pharrell Williams and JR posing at the Forever is Now international art exhibition, you’ve likely been living under a rock for the past month. The flood of staged images at the pyramids have become the most iconic feature of the exhibition, with Gen Zers flocking to pose — not to mention perfect — shots for their Instagram feeds and Tiktok posts.

Long queues of visitors patiently awaited their turn to pose for the camera in front of the most popular exhibits: Russian artist Alexander Ponomarev’s Ouroboros, Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn’s Together, and Egyptian artist Moataz Nasr’s Barzakh. 10 contemporary artists were featured in the exhibition, including American artist Gisela Colón, Brazilian artist João Trevisan, Egyptian born, Los Angeles- based artist Sherin Guirguis, British artists Shuster + Moseley, British artist Stephen Cox RA, and Saudi Arabian artist HRH Prince Sultan Bin Fahad.

The exhibition — the first of its kind ever to be held at the Giza Pyramids — closed yesterday after an almost month-long run. It was the latest exhibition by multidisciplinary art consultancy firm Art D'Égypte, which prides itself on supporting “the Egyptian arts and culture scene” and helping to “preserve Egypt’s heritage and advance the international profile of modern and contemporary Egyptian art, presenting a different view of Egypt to the world,” according to their website. The exhibition was held under the patronage of UNESCO and with a host of local and international sponsors, including the US Embassy in Egypt. It also included a series of talks at AUC’s Tahrir Cultural Center in downtown.

The exhibition has made headlines a lot, but has also garnered somewhat mixed reviews. After launching to much fanfare, it was extended for ten days due to popular demand. In October, the exhibition made international headlines when customs officials “detained” the British-built robo-artist Ai-Da for 10 days ahead of the opening of the iconic exhibition.

That super famous installation of an optical illusion of the Great Pyramid? It’s an NFT: French street artist and photographer JR’s Greeting from Giza, which makes it look as if there is a postcard with a giant hand holding up the top of the pyramid, with the top of the pyramid hovering above the rest of it when viewed from the right angle, was created as a non-fungible token or NFT. The installation has hieroglyphs hidden throughout and is broken up into 4,591 pieces — the exact age of the pyramids — is available as an NFT, or 4,591 NFTs to be exact.

In our opinion, it all had a touch of gimmick to it, reminding us a little of our latest visit to the Museum of Illusions, where we had to be instructed on where to stand and how to take pictures to get it just right. That was one of the reasons that those queues kept getting longer — visitors had to figure out which angle was right to capture the optical illusion they were seeking (and that they had seen repeated so many times on their socials).

The site-specific pieces placed the world’s oldest ancient wonders in the spotlight — but it’s also super grounding. Forever is Now aimed to create a “powerful curatorial pairing” by placing contemporary art in a historical setting, said Art D'Égypte founder Nadine Abdel Ghaffar in a video promoting the exhibition, a sentiment that was echoed by UNESCO.

But most interesting were the unintended consequences: From the wrong angle, the installations didn’t quite line up or make sense — the most obvious example of this being British artists Shuster + Moseley’s Plan of the Path of Light. If you zoomed out or just looked around, it looked like just about any tourist site in Egypt, with visitors being coaxed into taking camel rides or being carted around on horse and carriage. The construction (and demolitions) in the surrounding area gave the whole affair a little texture, which would have been a tad pretentious without it all.

The signage didn’t serve the exhibition. At all. If you weren’t wise enough to download the app before you went to the Giza plateau — which has spotty reception and not much in the way of internet service — you were likely left with more questions than answers about what the artists wanted to say through their pieces. The plaques, which were erected alongside each installation, were elusive at best, with most not providing any explanation at all of what it was you were looking at.

But hey, it was super accessible. On the upside, the exhibition was open to anyone visiting the pyramids, including busloads of tourists (who are here en masse to enjoy our balmy November weather). For a mere EGP 45, you could drive your car along the pathway and visit the various exhibits, consulting the exhibition’s app or occasional on-site maps — or just asking for directions along the way. This wasn’t one of those super exclusive exhibitions for those in-the-know — just about anyone who could afford to could visit the exhibition, while being reminded of the grandeur of the pyramids.