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RIYADH: Diriyah Art Institute’s inaugural exhibition “Continuum” opened on Saturday, presenting works by 11 international artists who form the first cohort of the Diriyah Art Futures residency.

Curated by Irini Papadimitriou, the show brings together installations, audiovisual pieces, VR works and AI-generated art that explore themes of memory, identity, displacement, migration, environmental concerns and our relationship with technology.

“‘Continuum’ is an umbrella title that we’ve decided to adopt for the program, and the exhibition is a celebration of the work that everyone has been creating and developing over a year at DAF,” Papadimitriou said at the opening. 

Among the works is UK-based artist William J. Brooks’ “Clastic Resonance,” a sound installation built with Riyadh sandstone boulders.

Low-frequency recordings of the mechanized rhythms of urban development, captured during the city’s ongoing physical and cultural transformation, are transmitted as vibrations perceptible through direct touch. 

The piece reflects on impermanence and the sonic memory of place, drawing on the rhythms of the city’s rapid transformation. 

“We’re in a specific moment in time in Riyadh, and Saudi in general, where there’s a tremendous amount of construction projects occurring. I was particularly interested in the transient sonic output that comes from this,” Brooks told Arab News. 

As visitors touch the rocks, they feel subsonic vibrations that ebb and flow, resembling the rhythm of breathing. Brooks uses the piece to question how construction sounds affect the surrounding environment and how an artist might respond to them.

“When I first came here, I became really aware of the ecology in Riyadh and the call to prayer, because I’m not familiar with that. I became super conscious of the sounds occurring and the sheer volume of the city,” he added. 

Another striking work is Jordanian artist Aya Abu Ghazaleh’s “It Grows Within,” which reflects on forced displacement through an immersive installation centered around a tree trunk built from wooden clothespins. 

The object, both ordinary and symbolic, represents the belongings left behind when uprooted. 

The piece takes a circular form, spiraling around an invisible clothesline that holds traces of rust and embroidery. The design creates an enclosed loop that visitors cannot escape.

She said: “It’s a trap, actually. You can never leave; the circularity.  It’s not typically the way you see clothes being hung, but now it’s become more of a circular (experience) ... You never sit in a corner, you just keep rotating. 

“It’s like someone is still looking for home and never stopping.”

The installation incorporates sounds collected from the area, including Dabkeh chants, the call to prayer, and alarms, layering archival noise into the experience of loss and repetition. 

Tunisian artist Dhia Dhibi’s “Archiving Retention” interrogates the fragile relationship between digital traces, historical memory, and online archives. Reflecting on the flood of images of war shared over the past year, he asked: “What images are there to preserve afterwards? Or in other words, does it really matter to preserve any digital content online?” 

His exploration took him back to 2010, when internet access in Tunisia first became more widely available. 

“It actually kind of induced or helped the revolution to happen, because people were used to certain mass media images and then all of a sudden they were exposed to images or videos of protests that were unprecedented. For me, it’s my sort of archeology of media, in a way,” he told Arab News. 

The work builds on three elements: videos, posts, and sounds. Most central is a large 29-level pyramid-like piece, symbolizing the 29 days of the uprising, made of stills taken from videos that were posted during each day. 

Developed in collaboration with Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains in France, the Emerging New Media Artists Programme provides participants with professional equipment, a production budget, and a wide range of multidisciplinary learning opportunities.

The first cohort includes artists from ������Ƶ, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Bahrain, Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. 

Their works collectively highlight the global and regional conversations shaping the future of art in a digital age.

The exhibition will run until Nov. 15.