Diana Al-Hadid

Syrian-born and Brooklyn-based artist Diana Al-Hadid (born in 1981) is renowned for her monumental sculptures, intricate panel works, and surreal bronzes that explore the relationship between construction and erosion. Spanning various media and scales, her practice examines historical influences and artistic traditions that shape cultural and material perceptions, weaving together enigmatic narratives inspired by both ancient and modern civilizations. Her sculptures, wall reliefs, and works on paper are layered with references to architecture, cosmology, cartography, and historical imagery, forming compositions that feel simultaneously fragile and monumental.

Al-Hadid’s work is built through layers of material and historical reference points, drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as historical architecture, classical sculpture, scientific advancements, and the works of old masters. Her richly detailed compositions bridge past and present, incorporating elements of allegory, religious iconography, ancient manuscripts, and female archetypes. Her process transforms materials such as polymer gypsum, plaster, fiberglass, wood, steel, and pigment into structures that hover between abstraction and figuration, their surfaces evoking the slow formation of natural landscapes or the weathered decay of architectural ruins.

Her panel works, which evolved from her large-scale sculptures, embrace a fusion of painting and sculpture. Using controlled layering techniques and gestural dripping, she constructs delicate yet structurally complex compositions reminiscent of frescoes or tapestries. Holes and voids in the material are not created by force, but rather emerge organically through the process, reinforcing an interplay between mass and emptiness. These panels can be mounted on walls, realized as hanging objects, or adapted as site-specific architectural interventions.

A recurring reference in her practice is Allegory of Chastity (1479) by Hans Memling, in which a figure stands within an imposing mountainous landscape, a motif echoed in her own compositions. Another significant influence is Gradiva, a renowned Roman bas-relief that has been reinterpreted across art and literature. She has also explored Ottoman visual traditions, creating a series of panels inspired by 16th-century depictions of cities by miniaturist Matrakçı Nasuh, as well as works referencing The Book of Miracles, a German Renaissance manuscript. Architectural fragments and historical ruins remain central to her practice, evoking structures such as towers, labyrinths, and urban landscapes—yet constructed from materials that emphasize lightness, fluidity, and transformation.

Al-Hadid’s approach to materiality and form resists rigid categorization. Art historian Aruna D’Souza describes her work as “engaged with architecture—imagining the body as a kind of scaffold or superstructure, using materials commonly found on building sites—yet anti-architectural in one crucial way: it is a product of intuition, of responsiveness in the moment, of seeing what’s there and what needs to come next, of having a vision and allowing it to develop according to its own logic.” This fluidity and sense of improvisation allow her to decontextualize the historical sources she references, layering figurative, landscape, and architectural elements to create objects that transcend time and place.

In 2018, Al-Hadid presented Delirious Matter in Madison Square Park, New York, featuring six female figures—The Grotto and Gradiva; Citadel; and three works titled Synonym. Suspended between ruin and regeneration, these elusive forms created a kinship of women drawn from art history, reinforcing her ongoing exploration of the feminine presence in visual culture. Her wall panels, described by the artist as “somewhere between fresco and tapestry,” emphasize her skilled gestural brushwork, while their abstractions recall both human-made constructions and natural formations, such as the drapery of fine fabrics or the slow accumulation of cave deposits.

Al-Hadid received a BFA in Sculpture and a BA in Art History from Kent State University in 2003, followed by an MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005. She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, NYU Abu Dhabi University Gallery, the Vienna Secession, and the Columbus College of Art and Design, among others. Her work is held in major public and private collections worldwide, including Princeton University, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and The Bronx Museum of the Arts. She has also been collected by institutions such as The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Internationally, her works are part of collections at the Grieg Foundation in Norway, the Misk Art Foundation in Riyadh, and the Ministry of Presidential Affairs in Abu Dhabi. Additionally, she has created several public and site-specific installations, including the permanent work The Arches of Old Penn Station at 34th Street Penn Station in New York and a commissioned project for the Planting Fields Foundation in Oyster Bay, New York.

Through her meticulous layering of material and meaning, Diana Al-Hadid creates a world that is both physically grounded and conceptually open-ended, offering a meditation on time, transformation, and the fluid nature of cultural memory.