Diana Al-Hadid: Archive of Longing

OCT 2, 2021 – FEB 6, 2022

Diana Al-Hadid Born in 1981 in Aleppo, Syria; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York Diana Al-Hadid studied at Kent State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has held solo exhibitions at the Akron Art Museum; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Mills College Art Museum, Oakland; and Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown; among others.

She has shown work in group exhibitions at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada; Columbus Museum of Art; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln; Tampa Museum of Art; and Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Jose Museum of Art; Speed Art Museum, Louisville; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

All works: Diana Al-Hadid

Dimensions are in inches followed by centimeters; height precedes width precedes depth.

Blind Bust I, 2012 Bronze, painted stainless steel 74 ¼ x 36 x 36 in.

(188.6 x 91.4 x 91.4 cm) Edition 1 of 2, with 2 AP Courtesy of the artist Pgs: 6, 7, 18, 19, 20

Magmatic, 2018–2019 Bronze, polymer gypsum, fiberglass, steel, pigment 16 ¾ x 21 ¼ x 33 in.

(42.5 x 54 x 83.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist Pgs: 1, 3, 11

Subduction, 2019 Bronze, polymer gypsum, fiberglass, steel, pigment 17 x 21 ½ x 23 ¼ in.

(43.2 x 54.6 x 59 cm) Courtesy of the artist Pgs: 12, 20, 22

Blind Bust II, 2012 Bronze, painted stainless steel 77 x 46 x 46 in.

(195.6 x 116.8 x 116.8 cm) Edition 2 of 2, with 2 AP Courtesy of the artist Pgs: 19, 20, back cover

Moving Target, 2014 Steel, fiberglass, polymer gypsum, cardboard, gold leaf, paint, pigment Approx. 234 x 194 x 9 in.

(594.4 x 492.8 x 22.9 cm) Courtesy of the artist Pgs: 3, 4, 8

Take, 2021 Bronze, alabaster, stainless steel 7 ½ x 14 ¾ x 20 ¼ in.

(19.1 x 37.5 x 51.4 cm) Courtesy of the artist Pgs: 6, 7, 12–13

Blind Bust III, 2012 Bronze, painted stainless steel 77 x 46 x 46 in.

(195.6 x 116.8 x 116.8 cm) Edition 2 of 2, with 2 AP Courtesy of the artist Pgs: Front cover, 6, 7, 17, 19, 20

Smoke and Mirrors, 2015 Polymer gypsum, fiberglass, steel, wood, concrete, foam, black mesh, pigment 116 ½ x 149 x 94 in.

(295.9 x 378.5 x 238.8 cm) Courtesy of Morán Morán Gallery, Los Angeles Pgs: 6, 8, 9, 10

Give, 2021 Bronze, alabaster, stainless steel 7 x 15 x 19 ¼ in.

(17.8 x 38.1 x 48.9 cm) Courtesy of the artist Gradiva, 2017–2018 Polymer gypsum, fiberglass, powder-coated steel, plaster, pigment 156 x 180 x 12 in.

(396.2 x 457.2 x 30.5 cm) Courtesy of the artist Pgs: 5, 6, 7

Smoke Screen, 2015 Polymer gypsum, fiberglass, steel, gold leaf, plaster, pigment 114 x 360 in.

(289.6 x 914.4 cm) Courtesy of the artist Pgs: Front cover, 6, 7–8, 15, 16, 17–18, 20, 21–22, back cover

Untitled, 2014 Bronze ¾ x 32 x 30 in.

(1.9 x 81.3 x 76.2 cm) Courtesy of the artist Pgs: 12, 22 Volcanic Split, 2018 Polymer gypsum, fiberglass, steel, copper leafing, aluminum leafing, pigment 63 x 165 ½ x 5 ¾ in.

(160.02 x 420.4 x 14.6 cm) Courtesy of Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen Pgs: 5, 12, 13, 14, 22

Installation photography: Jonathan Vanderweit, courtesy of the Henry Art Gallery.

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with the incomplete nature of collective stories—the impossible longing both to record/ archive them as well as to participate in their making. As each iteration shifts in service of a different time, agenda, or narrator, the resulting palimpsest of information shaping our understanding of these narratives destabilizes.

Rather than a unique linear interpretation, AlHadid’s works instead hold their multiplicities in an active complexity that is always in a state of dissolution, disintegration, and change.

Diana Al-Hadid’s work explores the interplay between the female body and the European art canon; Syrian, Muslim, and immigrant histories and mythologies; and architectural icons and the natural world. Born in 1981 in Aleppo, Syria, and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Al-Hadid creates three-dimensional artworks that speak to her interest in the translation of disparate narratives across culture and time. This monographic exhibition presents a selection of thirteen sculptural works made between 2010 and 2021 brought into interpretive grouping around the artist’s investigation of historical, mythological, and allegorical narratives of women as a fundamental through-line of her practice.

This conceptual approach is directly mirrored in the artist’s seemingly subtractive, improvisational sculptural process and her often counterintuitive use of materials.

In this way, Al-Hadid’s work resists the monumentalizing ideas of fixity and singularity, concepts linked inextricably to a patriarchal and colonialist approach to history, identity, and figuration. Instead, Al-Hadid foregrounds disruption and rupture in the endlessly woven fabric of our stories of self/the body, the migration of information and interpretation through space and time, and the fundamentally unfixed nature of human desire.

While Al-Hadid’s work is often interpreted in relation to her interest in the art historical canon, this show situates the artist’s deployment of these influences as advancing a network of feminist concerns: the female protagonist and its conflicted relationship, through both language and image, to women’s agency, power, and self-actualization. The title refers to the artist’s ongoing engagement

Diana Al-Hadid: Archive of Longings is organized by Shamim M. Momin, Director of Curatorial Affairs. Lead support is provided by Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. Held in conjunction with the Feminist Art Coalition, a nationwide initiative of art projects that seek to generate cultural awareness of feminist thought, experience, and action, this exhibition is also made possible in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Moving Target, 2014 Steel, fiberglass, polymer gypsum, cardboard, gold leaf, paint, pigment Courtesy of the artist The implication of the body is central to Al-Hadid’s practice regardless of the literal presence of a figure. Creating works of monumental scale involves Al-Hadid’s investment of physical labor, as she moves through, around, and on top of them. Likened to a staircase, Moving Target solicits the viewer to experience the sculpture in the round and in turn, sense how their body feels in its presence. Reminiscent of both figure model drawing sketches and sculptural reliefs, the outlines of heads emerge from the top latticed panel, suggestive of the Fates (a group of three Greek goddesses whose mythology includes weaving the destinies of newborn mortals). The intersection between time and spatiality weaves together histories and cultures, always in flux.

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Gradiva, 2017–2018 Polymer gypsum, fiberglass, powder-coated steel, plaster, pigment Courtesy of the artist Al-Hadid culls elements from mythology and literature, dissolving female forms and landscapes into vestiges of their original source. Albeit abstract and gestural, this wall-like sculpture alludes to the mythological female character Gradiva from Wilhelm Jensen’s titular 1903 novella. In the story, the bas-relief sculpture of Gradiva, or “the woman who walks through walls,” captivates an archaeologist who then dreams of chasing Gradiva through the ruins of Pompeii. This idealized apparition inspires the protagonist’s journey to Pompeii, culminating in the manifestation of Gradiva as his childhood love interest. The myth of Gradiva became famous through a psychoanalytic study by Sigmund Freud, and occupied the imagination of surrealists and poststructuralists. The many recollections and reconstructions of this allegorical figure serve as a point of departure for Al-Hadid. The enigmatic Gradiva repeatedly materializes and disappears from this facade, evoking the elusive nature of memories and desires.

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Smoke and Mirrors, 2015 Polymer gypsum, fiberglass, steel, wood, concrete, foam, black mesh, pigment Courtesy of Morán Morán Gallery, Los Angeles Notwithstanding the spectacular transformation of raw materials, the title Smoke and Mirrors reveals the reality of illusion. Al-Hadid manipulates tangible objects to appear ethereal and gravity-defying while emphasizing the physical presence of the sculpture. Visual ambiguities abound: the accumulation of stalactic forms simultaneously ascends and descends. The billowing figure rises above the immense plinth, and its semblance to a vision exists between the fantastic and the real. The concrete mirror attempts to capture the reflection of the head in motion. The visceral impact of Smoke and Mirrors insists on moving and changing in response to the interplay between perception and imagination.

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Gradiva, 2017-2018, Courtesy of the artist

Gradiva, 2017-2018, Courtesy of the artist

Smoke Screen, 2015 Polymer gypsum, fiberglass, steel, gold leaf, plaster, pigment Courtesy of the artist Al-Hadid destablizes the relationship between painting and plane by using sculptural materials and processes in unconventional ways. She “paints” in polymer gypsum, fiberglass, and plaster, building an image in drips over a wall-like support. Once dried and pried off the wall, the image becomes an object hovering “somewhere between a fresco and tapestry.”

For Smoke Screen, Al-Hadid reinforces small painted marks until an architectural form—an archway, a passageway, or a dividing wall—takes shape. The imagery is a composite of figures and landscapes drawn from various sources, but the liquefied surface obliterates the details. Inserted directly into the museum’s wall and activated by the viewer’s own body moving through the work, Smoke Screen oscillates between figuration and architecture.

The shifts in its relation to the body of work and of the viewer obfuscate a singular narrative, manifesting a network of personal and global connections.

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Blind Bust I, 2012

Blind Bust II, 2012

Blind Bust III, 2012

Bronze, painted stainless steel

Bronze, painted stainless steel

Bronze, painted stainless steel

Courtesy of the artist

Courtesy of the artist

Courtesy of the artist

Al-Hadid’s work blurs the boundaries between presence and absence, solid and fluid, figure and abstract. For the Blind Bust series, Al-Hadid sculpted clay into a head “blind” under a box. Her hands and mind guided the process, attesting to our inability to see our own heads. Al-Hadid built the pedestal in dialogue with the head, and the multiple tiers evoke an appearance of a neck or shoulders, extending the bodily figure. The removal of mass renders the function of the plinth obsolete but the accrual of bronze drips preserves the form. “The head is where we generally ‘locate’ our self,” Al-Hadid said. “In the same way that I wanted to remove the pedestal but maintain a sense of its presence, I wondered how much of myself I could lose and still be there.”

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