Located prominently on King Faisal Road in Al Bujairi, Diriyah, just northwest of Riyadh, is the vast new 129,000 square foot Diriyah Art Futures institute. Inaugurated in December 2024, the new media arts center is dedicated to the rapidly expanding genre of digital art and is among the first institute of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa. Developed by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture, Diriyah Art Futures highlights the kingdom’s growing interest and investment in art and culture involving new technology and artificial intelligence.

Inside the institute’s opening exhibition, “Art Must Be Artificial: Perspectives of AI in the Visual Arts,” which ran until February 15, were dozens of digital multimedia works of art that immediately captivated viewers’ attention. The exhibition surveys the history of computer art since the 1960s, featuring immersive works by regional and international artists. The exhibition celebrated the extent to which technology is redefining art in the digital age, from Saudi artist Lulwah al-Homoud’s Arabic calligraphy transformed into digitally produced geometric abstractions to Miguel Chevalier’s “Fractal Flowers,” combining a mixed media installation and video projected on wool and silk tapestry to showcase the fragmented corolla of a large image of a flower. It also showcased Leonel Moura’s “ARS (Art Robot Swarm),” with robots creating works of art on a long sheet of paper without external human control. At the same time, it underlined the evolving relationship between human creativity and tech when it comes to the creation of art and how one is still dependent on the other.

Haytham Nawar, director of Diriyah Art Futures and former chair of the arts department at the American University in Cairo, said the exhibition is significant because “it provides a historical overview” of digital art. “In Saudi, there is knowledge of the history of computational art, especially the usage of AI and generative art,” added Nawar. “What it does is connect international artists in the field with those working in Saudi.”

Diriyah Art Futures, according to its website, “is the first institution of its kind in the MENA region,” that works “to transform the Kingdom into a global powerhouse of New Media Arts.” Its location in Saudi Arabia, a country where a majority of the population – 63% according to the Saudi Statistics Authority – is under the age of 30 and increasingly tech savvy, provides a fitting backdrop to explore the evolving relationship between art and tech.

Diriyah Art Futures is one of several recent cultural initiatives in Saudi Arabia focused on new technologies. In Riyadh, the Misk Art Institute hosted the exhibition “The Silent Age of Singularity,” displaying works by 20 Saudi and international artists exploring the impact of the internet age. From February 19-21, the fourth Saudi Media Forum, held in Riyadh under the theme “Media in an Evolving World,” addressed topics such as digital transformation, the use of AI in content creation, and the kingdom’s growing role in gaming and esports. Speaking at the conference, Saudi Minister of Media Salman bin Yousef al-Dosari emphasized how Saudi Arabia had begun implementing plans and setting priorities for the sector, noting the “evolving landscape based on the transformation of infrastructure in financing and new technologies.”

A Global Center for New Media in Riyadh

The launch of Diriyah Art Futures also reflects the kingdom’s continued investment in its arts sector to enhance its cultural credentials and boost tourism. According to the institute’s opening press release, Diriyah Art Futures “aims to establish Saudi Arabia as a global centre for New Media and Digital Art, while amplifying the voices of the region in its engagement with art, science, and technology.”

“As an artist, I feel that establishing a center focused on the future in Riyadh, specifically in Diriyah, is a profound step in linking our rich past to our evolving future,” explained Homoud. “Diriyah, with its iconic mud houses and deep connection to the foundation of the country, represents tradition and heritage. I am particularly thrilled that this center will serve as an educational hub, inspiring new generations to be both innovative and authentic in their creativity and contributions.”

Her work, she explained, “bridges the gap between the human touch and the digital world,” and past traditions and contemporary cultures, given its emphasis on Arabic calligraphy. Her work has been shown throughout Saudi Arabia and internationally, including at Noor Riyadh, the Saudi capital’s annual exhibition dedicated to light art.

“I began by hand coding, finding connections between Arabic letters and numbers in the Vedic square – an approach traditionally used to create geometric patterns,” she explained. “These codes were then digitally regenerated in Adobe Illustrator, where I further developed them into words. The final pieces are hand painted and silkscreen printed, emphasizing the fusion of manual craftsmanship with digital precision.”

Diriyah Art Futures is a unique art center that is part school, laboratory, and exhibition space. It aims to foster artistic thought and collaboration among artists from Saudi Arabia, the region, and across the globe. A focus, explained Nawar, is on research, documentation, and producing new work.

“Historically speaking, it’s an important moment for Saudi and the region to take the lead in the field and invest in the talents in this region and promote it globally,” added Nawar. “Artists working in new media need a platform – they need an institution. DAF, through the Ministry of Culture, is supporting old talent that didn’t have the chance to express, share, export what they produced alongside new talent.”

Nawar underlined that Diriyah Art Futures is also a way to elevate the voices of artists from across the region – from Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Egypt where a strong history of fine art exists – and give them a new platform in Saudi Arabia that allows them to experiment with new media. “We are investing in the future to build educational modules for the future using genres like digital art and new media,” added Nawar.

The global reach of Diriyah Art Futures is reflected in the institute’s one-year Emerging New Media Artists Program, which launched in November 2024. Developed in collaboration with Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains, based in Tourcoing, France, the inaugural group of 12 artists from 11 countries includes Salma Aly of Egypt, Youssef El Idrissi of Morocco, and three Saudis.

The new institute will offer a series of three-month artist residencies beginning this year under the theme “High-Resolution Dreams of Sand.” It will focus on the connection between history and the future as well as human beings’ relationship with nature and tech, reflecting the context of Diriyah Art Futures’ location in Diriyah, a UNESCO World Heritage site and seat of the first Saudi state.

“The digital art scene in Saudi Arabia is fascinating right now because it’s in this dynamic phase of growth and experimentation,” said Saudi artist Daniah Alsaleh, who participated in the institute’s inaugural exhibition. “What I love seeing is how artists are exploring technology not as a gimmick but as a meaningful tool to express their ideas.”

Alsaleh said she doesn’t view digital art as a replacement for traditional techniques but as “an extension of them,” citing her 2021 installation “That Which Remains,” created for the first Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale in 2022. “It combines painting with technology, blending the physical and the digital in a way that feels very organic to me,” she said. “Digital media is important to my practice because it allows me to address the complexities of today’s world – how we communicate, remember, and navigate cultural identity in a rapidly evolving, technology-driven society.”

An Architecture Uniting Past and Future

With its long, jagged extensions that seem to emerge as if from the earth into the sky, the contemporary structure of Diriyah Art Futures mirrors its avant-garde vision. Designed by the Italian firm Schiattarella Associati, it is located on a rocky escarpment near a local farm and aligns with the form of the nearby river valley, Wadi Hanifah. Its narrow and deep passages use modern forms to mirror local traditional Najdi architecture with its predominance of geometric and abstract patterns. The complex itself was made in a manner reminiscent of traditional Saudi building techniques. Locally sourced stone, sand, clay, and timber were used in both the interior and exterior – using traditional methods that give way to sustainable practices that not only lower carbon emissions but also contribute to local economic growth.

“Our mission with this structure was challenging; we had to preserve elements from Najdi architecture while also creating a structure that reflected the forward-thinking nature of digital art,” said Andrea Schiattarella, founder of his eponymous firm. “We felt the responsibility of creating a structure in a country so different from our own. We also felt there was a misunderstanding in creating a modern structure for the future – that they need to follow a Western model, which is not so. We needed to find another way to showcase the future but not through Western style architecture.”

After studying traditional Saudi architecture, Schiattarella said he and his team “strove to create horizontally, organically, focusing on the relationship between the light, the shadows, and the wind.” He added, “We also chose to work with materials close to the local land to echo a sense of sustainability that developed 100 years ago to protect people from the sand, sun, and harsh weather conditions of the desert.”

It is this marriage of tradition with the present and future that reflects Saudi Arabia’s ethos in much of its development today. As Alsaleh noted: “The building’s location in a UNESCO World heritage site gives this a rare combination of mixing heritage with the contemporary, bridging the past to the future.”