One of my favorite hangout spots in Riyadh is Diriyah. It reminds me of Kharan, my ancestral home. In this earthen city lies Diriyah Future Arts – an initiative envisioning the artistic landscape of the future, creating space for artists and educators to reimagine narratives using emerging technologies and traditional mediums.

From April 21st to July 19th, 2025, the space hosted Maknana: An Archaeology of New Media Art in the Arab World.

I visited this exhibit of the archaeology of new media art in the Arab world twice. The first time, I entered from the right side and was welcomed by a massive, machine-carved statue – an homage to the renaissance of the material age. The second time I entered from the left, I found myself overwhelmed by the grand staircase that led to a large screen displaying the crescent of a religious minaret hovering in the sky.

The exhibition featured over 40 artists from across the Arab world, each presented a compelling narrative worth exploring.

Maknana literally translates to “mechanization” in English, which serves as the central premise of the exhibition. Curated by Dr. Haytham Nawar and Ala Younis celebrated the creative achievements of Arab new media artists by providing them with a platform to participate in global conversations.

New media art, by its nature, urges artists to employ contemporary technologies – identifying mediums that resonate with the current times to craft cultural and aesthetic narratives. The exhibition was structured around four thematic components: automation, autonomy, ripples, and glitch. Each theme offered a distinct lens through which to engage with technology, forming its own universe of ideas and expression.

“Bright Sunny Day” 2022 by ARC Abdullah Rashed featured a striking yet satisfying simulation of an abstract cloth, as it moved between pixels and not actual air, creating glitched waves that resembled creases or silhouettes. The artist seems to have embraced the potential and imperfections of new age media, and therefore created a contemplative space for movement in an uncontrolled environment of the digital age juxtaposed with unpredictability of nature. 

A warm reminder of home, of familial relations, of neighbourhood was a beautiful installation “Reflections of Memories” 2022, by Hassan Meer, a dialogue between moving images and found objects.The videos that were placed in between objects, gave a glimpse into the personal lives, the objects such as suitcases capturing light as a lived experience, and the visuals showcasing movement in the neighborhood alley – all centered around meaning-making by humans. Therefore serving as a portal connecting the past to the present and a testament to material existence, as the artist tries to contemplate the changing visual and inner landscape.   

Kareem Lofty attempted to blend in cultural heritage with current applications of algorithm, the interplay of woven fabric with digital aesthetics evoked the tactile nature of fabric as a primal form of computational processing, the distorted visuals challenged perceptions of digital form. Contextualized within the realm of new media art in the Arab world, this work was rooted in the foundational heritage of algebra and algorithms of the region. Upon closer inspection, the tiny miniatures drawn on paper revealed algebraic patterns, while the woven design absorbed into the fabric – blended the zahir with the batin and vice versa.

One of the most visibly lighthearted works in the midst of intensely thought-provoking works was that of Amr Alngmah, her nostalgic series juxtaposed video game characters playing out their roles against the backdrop of Islamic Persian paintings. This form of storyletting urged the visitors to look beyond the confines of the gameplay to life itself as the center stage, where each character navigated through scenes to achieve their goals as they encountered moments of reflection, success, ambiguity, joy and failure. In this surrealist play of characters, I was most interested in the dance of the Beast and Belle from Beauty and the Beast, gazing into each other’s eyes, they moved through the rows in an endless succession of twirls. It makes one think of the challenges one has to navigate owing to the vastness of mediums available and complex interplay of identities. 

Another visual work depicting change in countless levels was “Scherben mantras” by Ali Kaaf, with pieces of shattered glass, the beholder struggled to orient themselves in the scenery, much like the pieces that were abandoned, created anew and abandoned again, clanking, piercing and ultimately becoming incapable of reflecting back a whole. 

One of the most captivating works that held my attention for several minutes was Hadiqat Al Umma – a series of nine animated videos drawing on elements from a park in Baghdad that the artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, frequented as a child. Using mediums such as charcoal drawings, photographs, and old TV and cinema footage, the work recreated childhood memories: birds, trees, balloons, flowers – the motion and resonance of fleeting moments that remain imprinted in the artist’s heart, even as fragmentation takes over their mind. In the far corner of the installation, a weeping horse remained static – a constant in changing times.

Another interesting work was a video installation of a miniature art refinery with a poetic narrative by an artist, who grew up in Kuwait close to an oil refinery by the sea. A miniature of a petroleum refinery, seen through the lens of a child’s fantasy. The imaginative narration spoke of creatures and existence from another world. It makes you wonder how a process devoid of life could sustain life. 

There were extremely engaging works – some animated, others using robots or mapping techniques. Some featured photographs with intentional glitches, and others were expansive in scale or concept. All were noteworthy. The works mentioned in this piece are selected solely based on the emotional resonance they had with the author at that particular moment.

Through their installation, an artist tried to create a rupture in the experience they had while visiting the recently opened Mathaf in Beirut. Walid Raad couldn’t find shadows in the artworks showcased in the museum – convinced religious zealots had destroyed them. But the artist was unable to find traces of debris either, so they built new walls on which shadow-like forms were carved , in abid to catch restless shadows. It made me think of the Persian miniature art form, which, unlike the European Renaissance painting of its time, had no shadows. Consisting of several layers, the process required bringing everything out of the shadows into the light, as material forms took shape.