Saudi Arabia opens the prospects for digital art .. “Maknnah” explores the new media.

The Diriyah Center for Future Arts – the first center specializing in new media arts in the Middle East and North Africa region – announced the launch of its second exhibition under the title “Maknah: Arkiology of the new media arts in the Arab world”, which opens on April 21 and continues until July 19, 2025, at the headquarters of the historical center in Diriyah.

This exhibition is a leading step that confirms the leadership of Saudi Arabia in embracing and presenting digital arts as a vital space for cultural interaction and contemporary creativity.
The exhibition comes with a joint organization between plastic artists and artists, Haitham Nawar and Alaa Younes, combining more than forty Arab artists from new media practitioners, who have taken technology as a way to re -imagine reality and formulate a new artistic language that expresses their issues and aspirations.

A new reading of art

“Maknnah” reviews a wide range of works that vary between video art, experimental films, obstetric systems, and expanded media, providing a historical and critical reading about the interaction of Arab artists with digital environments.
The exhibition is also inspired by the term “Maknna”, which raises questions about the relationship between man and machine, automatic creativity, and resisting artists for technical domination.

The exhibition includes a group of prominent Saudi names such as Ahmed Mater, Muhannad Seono, and Abdullah Rashid, along with prestigious artists from the Arab world, including Mona Hatoum, Akram Zaatari, Laila Sherine Saqr, Emily Jasser, and others.

The exhibition includes four main axes: “Maknna”, “Independence”, “Tamulots”, and “Glyich”, reviewing artistic patterns intersecting through generations and contexts, and dealing with topics such as digital protests, collective memory, and the aesthetics of technical defects.

Al -Diriyah Center also organizes a rich parallel program that includes seminars, performance shows, films, and workshops, allowing the public direct interaction with artists and thinkers in the field of new media, and established the Saudi site as a regional axis of contemporary digital arts.