Sorgente di Luce (Source of Light)

This 30-meter-tall installation is comprised of three bronze "trees" is a site-specific work for the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone. The Center's largest permanent art commission, it celebrates the history, creativity and energy that lies at its core. The form of the work and its location in the Center have symbolic functions, representing the energy and growth that have followed since the discovery--not far from its site--of Dammam Well No. 7, known today as the "Prosperity Well," where oil was first discovered in commercial quantities in Saudi Arabia. The installation illustrates life springing forth from the ground and reaching toward the sky, a poetic allusion to how Saudi Arabian society has grown and flourished as a result of the discovery of natural energy in the telluric depths of the earth below that has transformed into human energy.