Diriyah Art Futures (DAF), a branch of Saudi Arabia’s Museums Commission under the Ministry of Culture, has revealed the lineup for “Continuum 26,” an upcoming exhibition featuring works from its Emerging New Media Artists Program. The event is scheduled to take place from September 3 to November 7 in Diriyah, Riyadh, marking the second edition of this annual showcase.
“Continuum 26” presents new works developed by artists who participated in a year-long educational initiative designed to support innovation in new media and digital art across the Middle East and beyond. Throughout the program, participants received guidance and mentorship from established artists Louis-Philippe Demers and Rick Treweek. Their projects incorporate a diverse range of media, including immersive and multimedia installations, light and sound elements, moving images, virtual and mixed reality, as well as creations driven by artificial intelligence.
The exhibition’s title, “Continuum,” conveys the ongoing and evolving nature of artistic exploration that the program fosters. It emphasizes the convergence of distinct creative paths around shared thematic concerns, highlighting the interplay between reality and artificial realities within the artists’ work and their developmental journey.
The exhibition is organized around four key thematic pillars. The first, “Memory as a living process,” addresses personal, collective, environmental, and cultural dimensions of remembering. The second pillar, “Systems of power and optimization,” reflects on technology’s role as an extension of human choices, desires, and mechanisms of control.
The remaining two themes focus on “The body, perception, and presence,” which engages with embodiment, interspecies relationships, and immersive sensory environments, and “Repetition, rhythm, and collective experience,” which examines automated systems, labor, and human endurance. These themes collectively underscore the program’s commitment to exploring complex interactions between technology, society, and the human experience through artistic practice.