Open Call for Mazra’ah Media Arts Residency Programme

The 2025 residency theme High-Resolution Dream’s of Sand celebrates DAF as a beacon of critical, creative and scholarly development, supporting a regional perspective in New Media and Digital Art.

Their programme focuses on nurturing concepts and ideas that originate from or relate to the MENA region and the Global Majority, fostering a unique artistic dialogue.

This year, they invite proposals that engage with DAF’s physical location and the implications of its situation. They seek responses that not only interrogate the bridge between history and the future, but further consider DAF’s location adjacent to Diriyah’s farms; thereby inviting reflections on their human relationship with nature and technology.

They also invite applicants to consider DAF as a location within Riyadh: a city in process of being rewritten, in transition from digital renders to a new reality, encouraging speculations on ecologies emerging from contemporary contexts and those that may be influenced by late capitalism and Gulf-futurism.

Benefits

• A three-month residency at Diriyah Art Futures, including travel to Riyadh (if needed).
• Accommodation and workspace within DAF’s creative environment, set against Diriyah’s historical backdrop.
• A production budget and full support from conceptualisation to execution, in collaboration with the DAF production team.
• Access to media production labs, studios and the DAF library.
• Opportunities to showcase work for broader recognition and engagement, including potential exhibitions, publications and artist monographs.

Eligibility Criteria

• New Media Artists:
  • Applications will only be accepted from established and practising New Media and Digital artists.
  • They will accept applications from artists working in a broad range of media and genres across sound media, visual media, computational, biological, scientific and technology-related methodologies.
  • They invite applications from across the world and encourage participation from the MENA region.
  • Artists should submit a proposal indicating their intentions for the residency, including a proposal for new media or digital artwork to be produced or completed (if already in production) over the three-month period of the residency.
  • The proposal should indicate how the work responds to the 2025 residency season theme High-Resolution Dreams of Sand and relationship between human, nature and technology.

Application Requirements

• New Media Artists:
  • Conceptual and intellectual framework and the intended outcome of the residency (indicated above).
  • A description of how the artist envisions the final work can be shared, showcased or communicated to both the general public and an educationspecific audience at DAF.
  • A production timeline in line with the intended residency outcome.
  • Details on how DAF as a centre can support the applicant’s residency intentions and the production of their work in residency.
  • A summary budget in line with intended residency outcome.
  • A portfolio of previous artistic work and a biography or CV.

For more information, visit DAF.