As a sign of growing cooperation between Moscow and Riyadh, two female artists from Saudi Arabia are taking part in an international exhibition of digital art at St. Petersburg's iconic Hermitage Museum, the Saudi Ministry of Culture said on Thursday. "Saudi's growing economic and political relationship with Russia has today been given a boost with the opening of an international art exhibition in St Petersburg featuring two female Saudi artists," the ministry said in a statement, obtained by TASS. "Saudi Arabia's presence at the exhibition is part of an ongoing cultural partnership with Russia." The exhibition of AI-based digital art, titled "Artificial Intelligence and Intercultural Dialogue," will be unveiled on Thursday as part of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum's cultural program. It is organized by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia's sovereign wealth fund, and the State Hermitage Museum. "Art and culture can be tremendously powerful — building understanding and helping bring people together. We're grateful to our Russian friends for allowing us to show some of the great artistic talent that Saudi has to offer," Abdulkarim Alhumaid, a spokesman for the Saudi Ministry of Culture, said. The artworks, created by Saudi artists Lulwah Al-Homoud and Daniah Al-Saleh, explore the evolving relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and art. Lulwah's work, "Being and Existence," examines the link between language and emotions by developing an abstract form of language derived from the Arabic alphabet. ‘Sawtam,' a video installation by Daniah, uses an abstract image generated by the AI algorithm from 28 wind chimes and Arabic sounds, with each video scene corresponding to one of the letters of the Arabic alphabet. "Art can build bridges of understanding and hope and I am proud to play my small part in that," said Lulwah, whose work has been collected by international museums, including LACMA and Five Continents Museum, as well as sold at Sotheby's and Christie's. The Hermitage Museum's press service said in a statement the exhibition would bring together 14 artists and art groups from ten countries — the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Turkey, France and South Korea. The majority of the pieces included in the display are the result of processing large bulk of big data with the aid of AI technology. Among the participants are French art group Obvious, whose works helped to earn global recognition for AI-based contemporary art, and Kostya Novoselov, the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics. — Tass
