Diana Al-Hadid

Diana Al-Hadid examines the historical frameworks and perspectives that continue to shape discourse on culture and materials today. With a practice spanning sculpture, wall reliefs, and works on paper, the artist weaves together enigmatic narratives that draw inspiration from both ancient and modern civilizations. Framed by a host of references from antiquity, cosmology, cartography, and architecture, Al-Hadid’s work gives form to ghostly images abstractly rendered. The artist’s process-based explorations innovate from commonplace industrial materials. Their formidable presence sits steady in the lineage of creation and construction that we associate with the notion of empire, complicated by an often-elegiac tone. Diana Al-Hadid received a BFA in Sculpture and a BA in Art History from Kent State University, an MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has been the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and received a fellowship from the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Program. Her recent mosaic murals for New York City’s Penn Station were among 100 finalists for CODAawards. Al-Hadid has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, in collaboration with Madison Square Park, and the San Jose Museum of Art, amongst others. Her work is included in collections such as the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Massachusetts, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.