Dima Srouji Festures in Exhibition at Diriyah Art Futures: 'Of the Earth: Earthly Technologies to Computational Biologies'

Diriyah Art Futures (DAF), the MENA region’s first centre dedicated to New Media Arts, has opened its fourth major exhibition, Of the Earth: Earthly Technologies to Computational Biologies, in Diriyah, Riyadh. Curated by Irini Papadimitriou, Director of Exhibitions at DAF, and on view until 16 May 2026, the exhibition brings together over 30 local, regional, and international artists whose practices explore how digital technologies are reshaping humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

 

Among the featured artists is architect and artist Dima Srouji, who presents Red River (2023), a suspended installation composed of hand-blown glass sculptures. Produced in collaboration with a master artisan in Palestine, the work reflects Srouji’s long-standing engagement with material culture, craft, and the politics embedded within landscapes. The title references the Belus River—today known as the Na’aman River—historically believed to be the source of the sand used in the earliest glass objects.

 

In Red River, the poetic history of glassmaking is brought into tension with contemporary ecological and political realities. The river’s name points to its present condition, where the water takes on a red hue due to pollution from surrounding industrial

activity, including the nearby Rafael Advanced Defense Systems military factory. For Srouji, the river is not only a site of historical significance but also one deeply entangled with personal memory, featuring in the stories of her displaced grandmother and within the broader collective memory of Palestine.

 

Positioned within Of the Earth, Srouji’s work speaks to the exhibition’s wider inquiry into how art, technology, and science can offer new frameworks for understanding environmental degradation, cultural erasure, and systems of power. Through her collaboration with archaeologists, anthropologists, and artisans, Srouji foregrounds care, continuity, and embodied knowledge—proposing material practice as a form of resistance and remembrance in an increasingly technologised world.