Diana al Hadid

Between construction and deconstruction, the sculptures of Diana Al-Hadid evoke overturned buildings, collapsed structures revealing the fragility of all human undertakings, endangered by their own excesses. The artist’s influences are diverse, a mixture of Arab oral tales with the mythological epics and biblical writings, Islamic art with classical painting, Baroque with Gothic and Romanesque, the model of medieval churches with that of the tower, skyscraper and stadium, and the latest advances in physics and astronomy with the ephemeral productions of a colony of bees. Her modes of production join architectural engineering with free experiments in poetic, almost narrative form. The materials she uses are similarly diverse: concrete, plywood, fibreglass and polystyrene combine to form sculptures often built on a monumental scale.

Born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1981, Diana Al-Hadid lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She studied sculpture at Kent State University, Ohio (BFA - 2003 - Kent State University), and Richmond University, Virginia (MFA - 2005 - Virginia Commonwealth University). She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine in 2007 and that same year was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. In 2009, she was named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Sculpture, and received a United States Artist Fellowship as well as a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. Among the numerous shows that have featured her work are “The Station 2008”, Midblock East, Miami, “Unveiled: New Art from the Middle-East” in 2009 at The Saatchi Gallery in London, the 9th Sharjah Biennial, the United Arab Emirates, “In the Between” in Istanbul, and “New Weather,” at USF Contemporary Art Museum (2009). In the spring of 2010, she opened her first solo museum show at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.