Cairo is a city that does not try to please you. It draws you in on its own terms, with its traffic, voices, chaos and contradictions. It can be exhausting and wonderful in the same afternoon. People spend hours talking in cafés, the streets never seem to empty, and life unfolds with a vitality that can leave you breathless. Then you arrive in Giza. And those immense structures, which have witnessed pharaohs, conquerors, empires and religions, are still there.

I have always wondered what relationship Egyptians have with the pyramids. For us, they are a wonder to visit at least once in a lifetime. For those who live beside them, they are also an everyday presence. Perhaps you get used even to this. Perhaps you eventually stop looking at them. And this is precisely where contemporary art may have something to say.

Forever Is Now, conceived by Nadine Abdel Ghaffar through Art D’Égypte, grew out of a desire to bring archaeological heritage into dialogue with the artists of our time. An idea that might even seem simple on paper. But try to imagine what it means to work in front of the pyramids. Whatever you create, you already know you will not be the undisputed centre of attention. You have to accept that presence, engage with it and find a reason to be there.

With Possible Landscapes, Charlotte Colbert has built a large silver arch topped by an eye. Its surfaces reflect the sky, sand and pyramids, changing what the visitor sees. It immediately made me think of the window at the Mena House. That was a frame too. Except that, in Colbert’s case, the artist decides how we should look. The pyramids are probably among the most photographed monuments on the planet. We know them so well that we risk no longer seeing them. Then an artist comes along, places a giant eye in front of them and invites us to begin again.

Jiang Qiong Er has brought twelve golden figures into the desert, arranged like a procession. The work is called It Is Time to Plant Love. I like that title. Perhaps because, in front of monuments built to celebrate the power of rulers, speaking of love feels tenderly irreverent. The figures seem to belong to an imaginary civilisation. They are solemn and, at the same time, almost playful. They do not try to resemble ancient Egypt, but seem to seek a conversation with it.

Geoffroy Pithon, meanwhile, has introduced an explosion of colour into the desert. Hortus Pictus is a painted architectural structure, a kind of imaginary garden set against the geometry of the pyramids. There is a contagious freedom to his work. Painting enters a landscape dominated by stone and sand without worrying about being discreet.

With Passage, Raphaële Shirley has created a sequence of arches that visitors can walk through. The movement of the body continually changes the view of the landscape. With Celestial Vessels, Rochelle Nembhard looks to ancient Egyptian cosmologies and the forces that, according to those myths, preceded the creation of the world.

In The King’s Road, Seçkin Pirim constructs a path of light and dark stone. In The Gathering, Abdulrahman Taha uses large circular forms to evoke play, encounters and relationships between people. Finally, Egyptian artist Emad Abu Grain presents Talisman of Salvation, an arrangement of stones and ropes inspired by the Book of the Dead.

I lingered longer over this last work. Perhaps because, during last year’s trip, something had happened that profoundly changed my relationship with those places.

It was Friday, 21 November 2025. We were in Aswan, in Upper Egypt, after a Nile cruise. I was travelling with Franco Bosisio, a long-standing friend, one of those people with whom you can share both important things and nonsense—and it is often the latter that makes a trip unforgettable.

We were together in the room that evening when, at around eleven, his phone rang. The call was from Italy. It was someone who had looked after Ornella Vanoni for many years. They had first tried to reach her son and grandson, without success. They had then called Franco, one of Ornella’s closest and most trusted friends. They told him that Ornella had died.

I remember that call with a clarity that still surprises me. I could not repeat exactly what we said to each other immediately afterwards. But I remember the disbelief, the bewilderment, that absurd feeling of suddenly being impossibly far from everything. Ornella had undergone surgery, but the news still caught us unprepared.

Franco immediately began calling the people closest to her. I remember him trying to reach Stella Pende, one of her dearest friends, who lived near Ornella. There were other calls, other attempts to reach those who needed to know. I immediately wrote to Tommaso Sacchi, Milan’s councillor for culture.

We were in a room in Aswan, thousands of kilometres from Italy, and there was practically nothing we could do. It is one of the most painful feelings I remember from that evening. We wanted to be there, to do something, to be useful. Instead, all we could do was make phone calls.

Midnight was approaching. The following day, 22 November, would be my birthday. That is not an important detail in Ornella’s story, of course, but it became one in mine. Some dates end up holding memories very different from those we had imagined.

Franco decided to return to Italy immediately. He left the following morning. I stayed in Egypt. I had planned to visit Abu Simbel and decided to continue. That evening, I attended the sound and light show in front of the great temple of Ramesses II.

Abu Simbel is one of those places no photograph can truly capture. The four colossal statues of the pharaoh dominate the rock-cut façade. At night, illuminated against the darkness of the desert, their presence is almost intimidating. I knew the temple’s history: its construction more than three thousand years ago and its extraordinary rescue in the twentieth century, when it was dismantled and rebuilt on higher ground to save it from the waters of Lake Nasser. But that evening, all of this felt distant. I was thinking about Ornella.

I was standing before a monument Ramesses II had commissioned to celebrate his greatness and secure his place in human memory. An immense undertaking, designed to ensure that his name and image would continue to be remembered. And all the while, I was thinking about a woman I had known: her voice, her laughter, her wit, the freedom she had preserved even when it would have been easier to conform to other people’s expectations.

Ornella was difficult to describe. Just when you thought you had understood her, she would surprise you. She could be affectionate and sharp, generous and complicated. She had the rare gift of being herself even when it caused problems. And above all, she had that voice. A voice that belonged not only to her songs. It was there in the way she spoke, in the pauses, the unfinished sentences, the sudden jokes that could completely change the tone of a conversation.

That evening, in front of Abu Simbel, the thought of her death stayed with me. I do not want to pretend that I understood something extraordinary at that precise moment. When you receive news like that, your thoughts are confused. You move from disbelief to sadness, then to a memory, then back to disbelief. But in the months that followed, I often returned in my mind to those four illuminated statues.

A pharaoh had had a mountain carved so that he would be remembered. Ornella had needed nothing of the kind. Her voice had been enough. And perhaps that is the most beautiful thing: a voice cannot be seen or touched. Yet hearing just a few notes of one of her songs is enough to make Ornella immediately present again. Not as a figure from the past. As someone we still know.

When I saw photographs of the new edition of Forever Is Now, all these memories resurfaced. The works I encountered in Giza in 2025 are no longer there. They have been dismantled, as this year’s will be too. The desert has reclaimed its space, and other artists have arrived to offer their visions. The pyramids, of course, have remained.

It is a difference that interests me greatly. The ancient Egyptians built monuments to last as long as possible. The contemporary artists taking part in Forever Is Now know from the outset that their installations will have a short life. Yet I do not believe this awareness makes them any less important. A work can remain in our memory even after it no longer exists. It can change how we look at a place, remind us of something, bring us back to someone we have lost.

Of course, not every installation achieves this. Some are stronger; others perhaps do little more than exploit the extraordinary beauty of their setting. It is an inevitable risk when bringing contemporary art to such a famous place. But the idea behind Forever Is Now continues to fascinate me precisely because it embraces this encounter.

I would like to return to the Mena House. Open that window and see whether I would still feel the same sense of closeness. Walk among the works again and look at the pyramids through someone else’s eyes. I know it would be a different journey. Because something has happened in the meantime. And because, when we return to a place we have loved, we never find exactly what we left behind.

I often think back to that November in Egypt. To the mornings in Giza, the Nile, Aswan, the night at Abu Simbel. To Franco leaving for Italy and me remaining before those enormous statues, still struggling to accept the news of Ornella’s death. I think of the pyramids, of their stone. I think of Ornella, of her voice.

I could not say what the best way to be remembered is. Perhaps there is no such thing. I only know that some people continue to accompany us even after they are gone. And that certain places hold something of them, without anyone having decided they should. For me, since that November, the pyramids have meant this too. And perhaps that is why, whenever I see a new photograph of Giza, I feel as though I am returning.