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The present work by Diana Al-Hadid is both delicate and complex, retaining a three-dimensionality composed of structures that weave within themselves, very much a hybrid drawing simulating her monumental sculptures and room-size installations. Her work derives from a careful interplay of perspective within architecture and history, forming poetic narratives. Using towers as a central theme in her work, Syrian-American artist Diana Al-Hadid focuses on themes of urban development, power and wealth. Working in interdisciplinary practice of sculptures derived from crude materials of plaster, Styrofoam, wax and cardboard, her works are centered on tromp l’oeil effects, where structures converge within an optical illusion and vortexes are representative of history with unitary parts that can be assembled and disassembled. Skillfully mixing her Western and Eastern influences, as part of an immigrant family in the US, Al-Hadid draws inspiration from a wide range of sources including history, science fiction and myth. Her oeuvre is described as ‘impossible architecture’ invoking the stylistic elements from Medieval, Renaissance and Islamic art. Seen within a continuum of art history with converging layers, her works adhere to a historical narrative, consciously building them into her work.

The present work is boldly delicate and fragile; repetitive lines materialize into a skeletal structure in abstract form that is empty and desolate. Apart from her overwhelming sculptural experiments with the materiality of her works on paper explore movement and form through an oscillation between painting and sculpture. Using charcoal, graphite and pastels, her works are a subtle combination, utilizing their rigidity, smoothness and bold textures equally throughout the balanced composition. While multidimensional, the work is made of repetitive curved lines, and the wave-like amorphous shape is like an architectural ruin, honouring its decrepit power. Depicting the cyclical repetition of history through the endless and repetitive curvature of lines, the elements coalesce together into a greater entity, larger than its single unit. Carefully treading the imagined and real presence of space, she explores the void and solids through altering densities of opaqueness and transparencies. The work is quite beautiful romantic and contemplative for its romantic aestheticism. Mortality and spirituality.

Currently the artist’s first public commission, Delirious Matter, 2018, is displayed at Madison Square Park in New York City, featuring her new sculptural works, depicting how women have been depicted in art history with a process akin to ‘a blend between fresco and tapestry.’