Diriyah Art Futures Launches CONTINUUM 26 Exhibition

Diriyah Art Futures (DAF), an asset of the Museums Commission under the Ministry of Culture, has announced the lineup for CONTINUUM 26, an exhibition celebrating the creative output of participants in its second Emerging New Media Artists Program, with the show running from September 3 to November 7, 2026, in Diriyah, Riyadh. The announcement, released through official Saudi channels, marks another milestone for the first New Media Arts center in the Middle East and North Africa, a facility dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary creative practice at the intersection of art, science, and technology. The exhibition will present major new works developed over a year-long educational program, supported by DAF’s Education, Production, and Exhibition departments and guided by acclaimed mentor-artists Louis-Philippe Demers and Rick Treweek.

For international observers, CONTINUUM 26 offers a clear window into how Saudi Arabia is cultivating creative talent at home while positioning itself as a global hub for digital and new media art. The program reflects DAF’s wider effort to combine arts, research, and education to empower the next generation of artists, foster new forms of creative expression, and expand the Kingdom’s creative ecosystem in line with the ambitions of the Museums Commission as part of Saudi Vision 2030. The exhibition is the second installment in an annual series spotlighting innovative voices shaping the future of new media and digital art in the region and beyond. Could this be the moment when Riyadh’s emerging artists step confidently onto the world stage?

Context and Background

How did Diriyah Art Futures come to occupy such a distinctive place in the region’s cultural landscape? Established as the first New Media Arts center in the Middle East and North Africa, DAF operates as an asset of the Museums Commission under the Ministry of Culture, a structure that places it at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s national cultural strategy. Its mandate is deliberately cross-disciplinary: rather than separating art from science and technology, DAF treats their intersection as the most fertile ground for contemporary creative practice. That approach aligns with a broader global shift in which artists increasingly work with code, sensors, immersive environments, and artificial intelligence as readily as with paint or sculpture.

The Emerging New Media Artists Program is central to this mission. Now in its second edition, the program selects participants and supports them through a year of intensive development, mentorship, and production. CONTINUUM 26 is the public culmination of that journey, presenting the artists’ major new works to audiences in Diriyah and beyond. By pairing education with exhibition, DAF ensures that learning translates directly into visible cultural output, a model that strengthens both individual careers and the wider creative economy. The first installment of the series established the template; the second demonstrates that the model is maturing into a sustained annual platform.

The timing matters. Saudi Arabia’s cultural sector has expanded rapidly in recent years, with new institutions, festivals, and educational initiatives emerging across the Kingdom. Within that landscape, DAF occupies a specialized niche focused on technology-driven art forms that are reshaping museums, galleries, and public spaces worldwide. For a global audience, understanding DAF is essential to understanding how the Kingdom is building not only infrastructure but also human capital in the creative fields.

Key Details of CONTINUUM 26

What exactly will visitors encounter when the exhibition opens in Diriyah? CONTINUUM 26 will run from September 3 to November 7, 2026, presenting works that span immersive and multimedia installations, light and sound, moving image, virtual reality, mixed reality, and AI-generated projects. The participants developed these pieces during their year-long program at Diriyah Art Futures, working under the mentorship of Louis-Philippe Demers and Rick Treweek. Both mentors bring international experience to the process, helping participants refine ambitious concepts into resolved, exhibition-ready works.

The title CONTINUUM speaks to the ever-evolving nature of creative inquiry that defines the Emerging New Media Artists program. According to the official announcement, it represents a dynamic process in which divergent artistic trajectories converge around shared thematic inquiries. This continuum reflects both the developmental journey of the participating artists and the fluid boundaries of the topics they explore: worlds between reality and artificial reality, organic and synthetic, and human and artificial intelligences. The word choice is deliberate, signaling that the program values process, evolution, and interconnection rather than fixed outcomes.

The exhibition is structured around four key thematic pillars that bridge technological experimentation with deeply human questions. Memory as a living process explores personal, collective, environmental, and cultural remembering. Systems of power and optimization examine technology as an extension of human decisions, desires, and control. The Body, perception, and presence shifts focus toward embodiment, interspecies relationships, and immersive sensory environments. Repetition, rhythm, and collective experience explores the choreography of automated systems, labor, and human endurance. Together, these pillars give the exhibition intellectual coherence while allowing each artist’s individual voice to remain distinct.

Artists, Mentorship, and Creative Process

How does a year-long program transform an emerging artist’s practice? Participants enter the Emerging New Media Artists Program with proposals and ideas, then spend months researching, prototyping, testing, and refining under the guidance of established practitioners. Support comes from across DAF’s Education, Production, and Exhibition departments, meaning that artists receive not only conceptual mentorship but also technical and production assistance. This integrated model is unusual in the region and reflects DAF’s commitment to treating artists as professionals whose work deserves serious institutional backing.

The involvement of Louis-Philippe Demers and Rick Treweek as mentor-artists adds international depth. Demers is known for large-scale robotic and interactive installations that blur the boundary between machine and performer, while Treweek’s practice engages digital media and emerging technologies. Their presence connects participants to global networks and critical conversations, even as the work remains rooted in the region’s own questions and contexts. Mentorship of this kind helps emerging artists avoid isolation and accelerates their development toward international standards.

The resulting works are not student exercises but major new productions. The official announcement describes them as the artists’ major new works, developed with institutional support and presented in a professional exhibition environment. For visitors, this means an experience comparable to leading new media exhibitions anywhere in the world. For the artists, it means a public platform at a formative moment in their careers. Is there a more effective way to build a creative sector than by investing directly in its most promising practitioners?

International and Regional Impact

What does CONTINUUM 26 signal to the international art world? The exhibition positions Diriyah and Riyadh within the global conversation about new media art, a field currently dominated by institutions in Europe, North America, and East Asia. By presenting work in virtual reality, mixed reality, AI-generated art, and immersive installation, DAF demonstrates that the Middle East and North Africa region is not merely a consumer of these technologies but a producer of original creative content. That shift has cultural as well as economic significance, reshaping perceptions of where innovation originates.

Regionally, the exhibition strengthens Saudi Arabia’s role as a cultural hub for the wider Middle East. Artists and audiences from neighboring countries can look to Diriyah as a place where new media practices are taught, produced, and shown at a high level. The annual rhythm of the CONTINUUM series creates a predictable platform that regional practitioners can plan around, whether as participants, collaborators, or visitors. Over time, such consistency builds the networks and reputations that sustain a creative ecosystem. How many regions can claim a dedicated institution advancing art, science, and technology under one roof?

Economic and Strategic Significance

Why should economic observers pay attention to an art exhibition? Cultural investment is increasingly recognized as a driver of diversified growth, tourism, and urban vitality. Diriyah itself is a major development destination, and cultural programming at venues such as Diriyah Art Futures adds reasons for international visitors to extend their stays and for creative professionals to engage with the Kingdom. Exhibitions like CONTINUUM 26 contribute to the visitor economy while also generating intellectual property, skills, and networks that feed adjacent sectors such as film, gaming, design, and technology.

Strategically, DAF’s focus on new media aligns with Saudi Arabia’s broader emphasis on technology, innovation, and knowledge transfer. The skills developed in the program, from spatial computing to AI-assisted creation, are relevant far beyond the gallery. Participants learn to work with complex tools, collaborate across disciplines, and communicate ideas to public audiences, capabilities that are valuable in creative industries and the wider economy alike. By institutionalizing this training, the Museums Commission is investing in human capital with long-term returns.

The exhibition also reinforces Riyadh’s growing calendar of cultural events, which supports the Kingdom’s ambition to attract millions of visitors and to be recognized as a center of contemporary creativity. Each edition of CONTINUUM adds to that record, building credibility with international critics, curators, and collectors. In a competitive global environment, consistency and quality are what turn attention into lasting reputation.

Vision 2030 Alignment

How does CONTINUUM 26 connect to Saudi Vision 2030? The exhibition reflects DAF’s efforts to combine arts, research, and education to empower the next generation of artists, foster new forms of creative expression, and expand Saudi Arabia’s creative ecosystem in line with the ambitions of the Museums Commission as part of Saudi Vision 2030. Culture is a central pillar of the Vision, which seeks to diversify the economy, enrich quality of life, and project the Kingdom’s heritage and creativity to the world. By nurturing new media artists, DAF contributes directly to those goals, turning cultural ambition into tangible careers and productions.

The program also embodies the Vision’s emphasis on youth and innovation. Participants are emerging artists at the beginning of their professional lives, and the year-long program gives them tools, mentorship, and visibility at a decisive stage. The thematic pillars of CONTINUUM 26, from memory and power to embodiment and collective experience, show that this generation is engaging with profound questions through advanced technologies. As the exhibition opens in Diriyah in September 2026, it will stand as evidence that Saudi Arabia’s cultural transformation is not only about buildings and events but about people, ideas, and the continuous creation of new possibilities. What better measure of a nation’s future than the artists it empowers today?

20 Questions

Q1. What is CONTINUUM 26?

A1. CONTINUUM 26 is an exhibition celebrating the creative output of participants in the second Emerging New Media Artists Program at Diriyah Art Futures. It runs from September 3 to November 7, 2026, in Diriyah, Riyadh, and is the second installment in an annual series.

Q2. Who announced the CONTINUUM 26 lineup?

A2. Diriyah Art Futures, an asset of the Museums Commission under the Ministry of Culture, announced the lineup through official Saudi channels, as reported by the Saudi Press Agency. The announcement detailed the exhibition dates, themes, and participating mentors.

Q3. Where will CONTINUUM 26 take place?

A3. The exhibition will take place in Diriyah, Riyadh, at Diriyah Art Futures, the first New Media Arts center in the Middle East and North Africa. Diriyah is a historic and cultural destination in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Q4. When does CONTINUUM 26 open and close?

A4. CONTINUUM 26 runs from September 3 to November 7, 2026. This two-month window gives local and international visitors an extended opportunity to experience the works produced during the year-long program.

Q5. What is Diriyah Art Futures?

A5. Diriyah Art Futures is the first New Media Arts center in the Middle East and North Africa. It is an asset of the Museums Commission under the Ministry of Culture and is dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary creative practice at the intersection of art, science, and technology.

Q6. What is the Emerging New Media Artists Program?

A6. It is a year-long educational program at Diriyah Art Futures that supports emerging artists through mentorship, research, production, and exhibition opportunities. CONTINUUM 26 presents the major new works created by participants in its second edition.

Q7. Who mentored the participating artists?

A7. The participants worked under the mentorship of acclaimed mentor-artists Louis-Philippe Demers and Rick Treweek. Their guidance helped the artists develop ambitious concepts into resolved, exhibition-ready works across multiple new media formats.

Q8. What art forms are featured in CONTINUUM 26?

A8. The exhibition features immersive and multimedia installations, light and sound works, moving image, virtual reality, mixed reality, and AI-generated projects. This range reflects the program’s focus on technology-driven creative expression.

Q9. What does the title CONTINUUM mean?

A9. The title speaks to the ever-evolving nature of creative inquiry that defines the program. It represents a dynamic process in which divergent artistic trajectories converge around shared thematic inquiries, reflecting both the artists’ journey and the fluid boundaries of their topics.

Q10. What are the four thematic pillars of CONTINUUM 26?

A10. The pillars are Memory as a living process; Systems of power and optimization; The Body, perception, and presence; and Repetition, rhythm, and collective experience. Together they bridge technological experimentation with deeply human questions.

Q11. What does the pillar Memory as a living process explore?

A11. It explores personal, collective, environmental, and cultural remembering. Artists examine how memory persists, transforms, and shapes identity across generations and communities, using new media tools to give memory tangible and interactive form.

Q12. What does Systems of power and optimization examine?

A12. This pillar examines technology as an extension of human decisions, desires, and control. It invites audiences to consider how automated systems reflect and amplify human intentions, raising questions about agency in increasingly algorithmic environments.

Q13. What does The Body, perception, and presence focus on?

A13. It shifts focus toward embodiment, interspecies relationships, and immersive sensory environments. Artists explore how physical presence and perception change when mediated by virtual, mixed, and augmented technologies.

Q14. What does Repetition, rhythm, and collective experience explore?

A14. This pillar explores the choreography of automated systems, labor, and human endurance. It considers how repetition structures both machine processes and human life, and how collective experience emerges from shared rhythms.

Q15. How does CONTINUUM 26 support Saudi Vision 2030?

A15. It expands Saudi Arabia’s creative ecosystem in line with the Museums Commission’s ambitions under Vision 2030. By empowering young artists and fostering new creative expression, it supports cultural growth, economic diversification, and quality of life.

Q16. Why is Diriyah Art Futures significant for the region?

A16. As the first New Media Arts center in the Middle East and North Africa, it gives the region a dedicated institution for art, science, and technology. It positions Saudi Arabia as a producer, not merely a consumer, of new media culture.

Q17. How can international audiences engage with CONTINUUM 26?

A17. International visitors can plan to attend the exhibition in Diriyah between September 3 and November 7, 2026. Official Saudi channels, including the Saudi Press Agency, provide updates on programming and related events.

Q18. What role does the Museums Commission play?

A18. The Museums Commission, under the Ministry of Culture, oversees Diriyah Art Futures as one of its assets. It supports the center’s mission to combine arts, research, and education as part of Saudi Arabia’s broader cultural strategy.

Q19. Is CONTINUUM an annual exhibition series?

A19. Yes. CONTINUUM 26 is the second installment in an annual exhibition series spotlighting innovative voices shaping the future of new media and digital art in the region and beyond. Each edition presents a new cohort’s work.

Q20. What makes CONTINUUM 26 important for emerging artists?

A20. It provides a professional public platform for artists at a formative career stage, showcasing major new works developed with institutional support. This visibility helps participants connect with wider networks and advance their creative practices.

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