Archival Aesthetics

The Masaha Residency invites lens-based artists to explore how the medium redefines nostalgia.

The Spring 2022 cycle of the Masaha Residency will focus on bringing together emerging and mid-career creatives, hosting 10 artists and 1 writer for a 3-month period of discourse, research, and experimentation at Prince Faisal bin Fahd Arts Hall in Riyadh.

Attempting to capture every memory through social media is making us overlook the present reality as we try to document every second. The desire to perform and share have led to an overabundance of images, most of them left forgotten in a digital folder, which brings up the idea - what is the point of “capturing the moment”? What are we trying to archive? How is the lens interwoven with our need to create, record and remember? 

We invite Saudi and international lens-based artists to explore how the medium redefines nostalgia, and how the memory created can collapse time and make experiences both shared and personal through their practice. Images have changed history. Technology has changed what is remembered and how people react to memory. Making and distributing images are easier, faster, and less expensive. In this residency lens-based artists are encouraged to explore how the role of the lens is changing and what that change looks like. 

The Masaha Residency will highlight the search for new ways of remembering, being, and moving forward through photographic and new media exploration. We invite creatives to raise questions about the future of the medium for a globally connected audience and the role of the artist in that conversation. 

Who should apply?

Artists who focus on lens-based art including photography, film and new media art. Specific areas of lens-based and light-based media are listed below:

• Portraiture.
• Landscape photography (working from the built or natural environment).
• Still-life photography, (working from natural or manufactured objects).
• Documentary photography, photojournalism, narrative photography and reportage.
• Fine Art photography and photographic installation.
• Television, film and animation.
• New media practice such as computer-manipulated photography and photographic projections.