Donia Alshetairy

Donia Alshetairy (b. 1983) is a Saudi-based visual artist whose practice is grounded in systems thinking and
philosophical inquiry. With a background in information technology and system analysis, she approaches an
artistic methodology that focuses on dismantling epistemic, perceptual, and temporal structures, examining
how meaning is constructed, regulated, and destabilized within contemporary systems.

Her work investigates the conditions of modern awareness, shaped by acceleration, mediation, and
non-linear forms of time. Rather than treating language, sound, or memory as static subjects, she engages
them as active forces—mechanisms that organize attention, interrupt continuity, and redefine presence.
Central to her practice is an inquiry into how human perception negotiates systems designed to optimize,
archive, or erase experience.

Material and spatial decisions emerge from this conceptual framework. Through installations and abstract
compositions, Alshetairy constructs environments where vibration, rhythm, silence, and distortion function
as tools to render the intangible perceptible. These works enact specific conditions, positioning the viewer
within states of delay, tension, or perceptual instability.

Alshetairy has presented her work in institutional and exhibition contexts regionally and internationally,
including the Sharjah Art Museum, “From Within” by the Saudi Ministry of Culture in Diriyah, and exhibitions
in Berlin, Cairo, and Basel. Across her practice, she maintains a rigorous dialogue between thought and
matter, treating the artistic site as a testing ground where perception is measured against the pressures of
the contemporary moment.