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Opening of La Fabrique, the French Cultural Institute in Saudi Arabia

Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, in collaboration with Diriyah Art Futures, is a partner of La Fabrique | المصنع, a new space for Franco-Saudi artistic dialogue and creative exchange established in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) by the French Institute in Saudi Arabia and Riyad Art, an initiative of the Royal Commission for Riyadh City.

Presented jointly by Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains and Diriyah Art Futures (DAF), the exhibition *Au-delà de l’éphémère* brings together two bodies of work that explore how images emerge, circulate and accumulate across vastly different scales of time, technology and lived experience. From prehistoric caves to neural networks, and from handheld cameras to everyday life, the exhibition views the production of images as a continuous human impulse — a force that shapes memory, perception and the collective imagination.

Justine Emard’s multimedia installation *Hyperphantasia* (2022) by Justine Emard traces the origins of images across vast distances in space and time, from Palaeolithic cave paintings to machine-generated visions, right through to the dreamlike signals sent by astronauts in space. Drawing on artificial intelligence, neuroscience and archaeology, Justine Emard links humanity’s very first visual expressions to the contemporary computational imagination. Using machine learning models trained on images from the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave, the work generates a moving video fresco that reimagines humanity’s earliest cave paintings. These algorithmically generated images echo the flickering light of prehistoric torches, evoking a form of primitive cinema. At the same time, Justine Emard incorporates electroencephalographic data collected from astronauts aboard the International Space Station, translating dream signals into 3D-printed sculptural forms. Caves, space and the brain thus converge as analogous environments — zones of darkness, disorientation and exploration; and the creation of images—whether carved into stone, generated by algorithms or dreamt in weightlessness—remains a fundamental human impulse aimed at externalising inner visions.

In contrast, yet with an equally powerful resonance, Mohammad Alfaraj’s audiovisual work *Glimpses of Now* (2015–ongoing) offers a different approach. Comprising footage shot on mobile phones and handheld cameras, collected over a period of ten years, the work — constructed as a cinematic collage — brings together fleeting moments of everyday life across Saudi Arabia. Ordinary gestures, daily rituals, landscapes and sounds – young girls dancing, camels crossing the desert, the call to prayer – come together to form a collective portrait and a living archive of a society in transition. An evolving work in perpetual development, *Glimpses of Now* reflects the artist’s ongoing attention to her surroundings. Rooted in the oasis city of Al-Ahsa — a fertile, verdant landscape that is also home to significant oil reserves playing a key role in the country’s industrialisation — Mohammad Alfaraj’s practice highlights the tension between preservation and progress, intimacy and transformation. His images function as fossils of time, preserving gestures and sounds that might otherwise disappear.

The artists gathered here present the creation of images as both a technological and a profoundly human act. But also as an act of excavation and projection: a way of probing the past, mapping the present and imagining possible futures. Whether they emerge from caves, from consciousness, or from cities and everyday life, the images here become traces of who we are, of the way we see, imagine, remember and make sense of the world.

Diriyah Art Futures (DAF)

Diriyah Art Futures (DAF), developed by the Saudi Arabian Museums Commission, one of the eleven sectors of the Saudi Ministry of Culture, was inaugurated in 2024 as the first centre for art, research and education dedicated to new media arts in the Middle East and North Africa region. DAF hosts the annual Emerging New Media Artists programme, designed in collaboration with Le Fresnoy – Studio national. This programme is aimed at Saudi and international students aged under 35 (who already have a background in creative disciplines) wishing to further their artistic practices at the intersection of art, science and technology.

Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains

Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains is an institution dedicated to artistic training, production, research and dissemination, located in northern France, which offers a postgraduate training programme. Its mission is to enable young artists from around the world to produce works whilst benefiting from artistic and educational support, professional technical resources and a variety of means of expression. The works produced explore new forms of film (or video), photography, new imagery and digital creation (virtual and augmented reality, computer-generated imagery, artificial intelligence, immersive environments, robotics, video game technologies, etc.).

Following an initial partnership in 2019 with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture, which involved hosting two Saudi students for two years across the full range of educational activities offered by Le Fresnoy, the institution was approached to collaborate on the creation of Diriyah Art Futures and its Emerging New Media Artists programme.

Since the opening of Diriyah Art Futures in 2024, the two institutions have continued to collaborate in various ways and have been fostering exchanges between France, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East and North Africa region.

📷 Justine Emard, “Hyperphantasia / On the Origins of the Image”, installation, 2022, produced by Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains ©️ Justine Emard

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Lecture on ‘Derek Jarman’ by Cy Lecerf Maulpoix

WED 18 NOV 2026 — 4.00pm
A lecture organised as part of the educational programme, open to the public. Cy Lecerf Maulpoix is an author, translator and lecturer in critical theory at the city’s School of Fine Arts (INSEAMM).