The Team

Direction

CEO

Feriel Fodil

Feriel Fodil is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Villa Hegra.

Since 2023, she has been overseeing the development of Villa Hegra and the launch of cultural initiatives which, following an off-site phase, now also extend to the institution’s venue in AlUla, inaugurated in October 2025.
Through her leadership, she promotes an ambitious vision of culture as a driver of dialogue, exchange, and international cooperation. Deeply committed to combining artistic excellence with local engagement, Fériel Fodil envisions Villa Hegra as far more than a diplomatic initiative: a hub for contemporary creation and a genuine meeting place for the communities of AlUla and a wider audience of artists, researchers and creators from both Saudi Arabia and France.

Previously, she held several leadership positions at the Château de Chantilly, including that of Deputy Chief Executive Officer, having started as Chief Financial Officer and served as Acting Chief Executive Officer for nearly two years. The Château de Chantilly is home to the second largest collection of classical paintings in France, after the Louvre.

Prior to this, Fériel Fodil oversaw all financial and strategic planning aspects during the pre-opening phase of the Abu Dhabi Cultural District in the United Arab Emirates, a project aimed at creating the largest concentration of museums in the world, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which opened in November 2017.
She began her career as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Paris and Washington, D.C., and holds a degree from ESCP Business School.

Artistic Direction

Gael Charbau

Gaël Charbau is an independent artistic director, Chevalier of the Order of Arts and LettersCommitted to the French art scene, he has been working for twenty years to enhance its knowledge and recognition on the international stage by organizing exhibitions in France, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

He directed the Bourse Révélations Emerige for ten years, a program he founded with collector Laurent Dumas in 2014. From 2013 to 2025, he served as the curator of the artist residency program at the Hermès Foundation. Since 2015, he has been artistic advisor for Universcience (Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie and Palais de la Découverte).

In 2018, he was appointed as the artistic director of Nuit Blanche, Paris. In collaboration with Manifesto Agency, he was named the artistic director of the Paris 2024 Olympic Athletes’ Village in 2020. In 2023, he was appointed as the artistic director of the public art event “Un été au Havre”.

Basmah Felemban

Basmah Felemban is a multidisciplinary Saudi artist. Her work explores the intersections of Islamic art, geometry, digital design, and speculative world-building. A self-taught graphic designer, she earned an MA in Islamic and Traditional Art from the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London.

She merges traditional methodologies with contemporary tools such as video games, digital mapping, and Computer Numerical Control machines to examine identity, migration, and collective memory. Deeply engaged in the Saudi art scene, she has led curatorial projects and exhibited internationally (Venice Biennale, Islamic Arts Biennale, Riyadh Art week, Osaka World Expo 2025).

Currently, she explores video game development as an artistic practice and recently participated in the Art Explora – Cité internationale des arts residency in Paris (2024–2025). As a curator, she has played a key role in shaping the contemporary art scene in Saudi Arabia, leading projects such as Young Saudi Artists: Biting Between One’s Teeth (2025) and The Waves Won’t Stop WhenYou Leave (2019).