Diana Al-Hadid

Diana Al-Hadid is a contemporary artist. She was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1981 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BA in Art History and a BFA in sculpture from Kent State University in Ohio (2003), an MFA sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (2005), and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine (2007).

Artistic practice

Al-Hadid constructs large, architectural sculptures from media such as polystyrene, plaster, fiberglass, wood, and wax. These materials combine to give the works the sense of extreme fragility and immediacy, contrasting with their monumental scale and sturdy construction. The physicality of her work helps to articulate her concern with the inevitable crumbling of ambitious human constructions. The Tower of Babel, medieval cathedrals such as Chartres, and labyrinths such as the labyrinth at Crete are among the many references Al-Hadid uses to illustrate her all at once grandly historical and deeply personal themes.

Her show, titled, Reverse Collider (2008), integrates her interest in "impossible architecture" with the modern scientific instrument which has inspired the exhibition's title, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). For Al-Hadid, this particle accelerator signifies an "argument against infinity" ^[1] It is a reminder, like the Tower of Babel, of dangers of hubris and cyclical nature of creation and destruction.

Selected solo exhibitions

• Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX (2011)
• La Conservera, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Murcia, Spain (2011)
• Water Thief, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA (2010)
• Reverse Collider, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York, NY (2008)
• Record of a Mortal Universe, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York, NY (2007)
• The Gradual Approach of My Disintegration, Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, New York, NY (2006)
• Pangaea's Blanket (and the Slowest Descent from Grace), Visual Arts Gallery, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN(2006)
• The Fourth Room, Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA (2006)
• Immodest Mountain, Arlington Art Center, Washington, D.C. (2006)

Selected group exhibitions

• Miami,FL, OHWOW, Art Basel Miami Beach, IT AIN’T FAIR 2010,(2010)
• Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Art Galleries, Run and Tell That! New work from New York, (2011)
• Greensboro, NC, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Art on Paper 2010: The 41st Exhibition,(2011)
• London and Lille, France, Saatchi Gallery, The Silk Road, (2010)
• Miami, Florida, Frederic Snitzer Gallery, Paper, (2010)
• Rome Italy, Federica Schiavo Gallery, Does the Angle Between Two Walls Have a Happy Ending, (2010)
• Tampa, FL, USF, Contemporary Art Museum, New Weather, (2010)
• Abu Dhabi, UAE, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Saadiyat Island, Disorientation II, (2009)
• Gainesville, FL, UF University Galleries, Fresh From Chelsea, (2009)
• Brooklyn, NY, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Next Wave Festival, (2009)
• Istanbul, Turkey, In the Between, (2009)
• Watou, Belgium. Watou 2009, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?, (2009)
• New York, NY, Academy of Arts & Letters, Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, (2009)
• United Arab Emirates, The Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah Biennial 9, (2009)
• London, UK, The Saatchi Gallery, Unveiled: New Art From the Middle East, (2009)
• Black Bile, Red Humour: Aspects of Melancholy, curated by Oliver Zybok, Center for Arts and Culture, Montabaur, Germany (2008)
• Agitation and Repose, curated by Gregory Volk and Sabine Russ, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, NY (2007)
• Blood Meridian, curated by David Hunt, Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin, Germany (2007)

Awards

• Nucci Award, USF Graphicstudio, Tampa, FL (2010)
• Nimoy Foundation Award to support artist residency at USF Institute for Research in Art (2010)
• Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2009)
• United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow (2009)^[1]
• New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Sculpture (2009)
• Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York, NY (2007)
• Residency at Artist-in-the-Marketplace Program, Bronx Museum, New York, NY (2006)
• Residency with Full Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, NY (2006)
• Residency at Sculpture Space, Utica, NY (2006)

External links

• Images of works at Diana Al-Hadid's website
• Online sculpture gallery at Guernica Magazine
• Diana Al-Hadid New York City Gallery
• Diana Al-Hadid Berlin Gallery
• Marianne Boesky Gallery gallery.com/

References

1. ^ United States Artists Official Website

• Artinfo.com, "Diana Al-Hadid in New York", September 5, 2008
• The Art Newspaper, Diana Al-Hadid, December 6, 2007
• Daily Serving, Diana Al-Hadid, November 19, 2007
• nymag.com, Rachel Wolff, Diana Al-Hadid's Stairway to Heaven, November 7, 2007
• Saatchi Online, Morgan Falconner's Round-up of Summer Shows in New York, Fall, 2007

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Name	Al-Hadid, Diana
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Date of birth	1981
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