Born in Syria and raised in Ohio, Diana Al-Hadid makes haunting works that convey a world turned upside down. Formal yet liquid, amorphous yet figurative, the sculptures explore notions of traditional architecture while encompassing elements of painting, stagecraft, and suggestive open-ended narratives. While the pieces can look like renderings from a fantasy world, they are also intricate studies of space and structure in which the viewer is continually reengaging the work through its constant shift and flow of perspectives.
The exhibition Diana Al-Hadid highlights the artist’s use of pictorial devices conventionally used to convey perspective in two dimensions, innovatively extended into three-dimensional space. Al-Hadid’s recent large-scale gypsum-and-metal sculptures, small bronzes, and drawings were inspired by myriad sources, including Italian and Northern Renaissance painting, Gothic architecture, and Hellenistic sculpture. She covers new terrain for contemporary sculpture, all the while exhuming influential visual histories.
Al-Hadid (b.1981, Aleppo, Syria; lives and works in Brooklyn) received a BFA from Kent State University and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University; she also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Recent solo exhibitions include the Akron Museum of Art, Akron, OH (2013); the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC (2013); the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (2012); the University of Texas Art Center, Austin (2012); La Conservera, Murcia, Spain (2011); and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010). Her work has been included in numerous international group exhibitions including 10 under 40, Istanbul ’74, Istanbul, Turkey (2013); Cadavres Exquis, Museum Granet, Aix-en-Provence, France (2013); Invisible Cities, Mass MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2012); and Reoriented, Havremagasinet, Luleå, Sweden (2012).
Al-Hadid has been a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Sculpture and United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow, as well as a recipient of Joan Mitchell Foundation, Tiffany Foundation, and Pollock-Krasner Foundation awards. She is represented by Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.
