CONTINUUM '26

CONTINUUM '26 is a group exhibition at Diriyah Art Futures in Riyadh, open from 3 September to 7 November 2026. It presents new works by 16 emerging artists from the centre's second Emerging New Media Artists Programme, with pieces by the programme's two mentors. The works span installation and immersive multimedia environments, light, sound, film and video, virtual and mixed reality, and projects made with artificial intelligence.

Each participant developed a work over one year at the centre, with help from its education, production and exhibition teams. The programme was set up with Le Fresnoy, the Studio national des arts contemporains in France, and gives artists professional equipment and a production budget. Irini Papadimitriou, who directs the exhibitions programme at Diriyah Art Futures, curated the show with assistant curator Bushra Alghamdi. It is the second edition of a yearly exhibition series drawn from the programme.

The exhibition is arranged in four strands: memory as a living process; systems of power and optimisation; the body, perception and presence; and repetition, rhythm and collective experience. Across them the artists take up identity, place, belonging and relations between species, and the line between the real and the artificial. The cohort includes Mena El Shazly, born in Giza, whose media are analogue video, embroidery and performance. Other exhibitors include Omar Adel, Fai Ahmed, Dina Khalil, Badriyah Alsalem, Ezzat Shdad, Njood Albawardi, Harpreet Sareen, Linda Dong, Evgenii Popov, Noel Apitta and Gabriela Reyes.

The two mentors show new pieces of their own. Louis-Philippe Demers shows Radiant Bodies, an interactive installation in public space that turns human gesture into a collective choreography. Rick Treweek shows Ghost Out The Shell, pairing virtual reality with sculpture to look at physical and virtual identity. Talks, workshops and masterclasses on subjects such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and digital photography run alongside the exhibition.