Diana al-Hadid

Diana al-Hadid (born 1981) is a Syrian-born American contemporary artist whose practice encompasses sculpture, installation and drawing across a diversity of media. She resides and maintains her studio in Brooklyn, New York, and is represented by Kasmin Gallery.

Early life and education Al-Hadid was born in 1981 in Aleppo, Syria. When she was five, her family immigrated to Cleveland, Ohio, She grew up in an Islamic household. Al-Hadid resolved at the age of eleven to become an artist. She drew inspiration from family holidays to the Middle East, during which she visited the Jeita Grotto in Lebanon and encountered Islamic architecture.

In 2003, Al-Hadid received a BA in Art History and a BFA in Sculpture from Kent State University in Ohio. the same year in which she held her first solo exhibition.

Professional career

Al-Hadid makes sculptures from a large variety of materials such as steel, fiberglass, wood, aluminum, bronze, cardboard, expanded polystyrene, reinforced polymer gypsum, and wax. Painting influences for Al-Hadid include northern Renaissance painting, Mannerist painting, Pieter Bruegel, Cy Twombly, and the presence of floating figures. Figures have shown up in her later work; she notes: "Islamic belief forbids figuration, and it's something I want to address." Delirious Matter was supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The two murals, entitled The Arches of Old Penn Station and The Arc of Gradiva, were recognized by the CODAawards.

Other activities Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, Member of the Advisory Board

Collections and awards In 2009, she held a USA Rockefeller Fellowship and was a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2007 and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 2011. In 2020, she received the Academy of Arts and Letters Art Award. In 2021, she received a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship to conduct research at the Freer Gallery of Art.

Collections holding her work include the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Al-Hadid has exhibited work at the Secession in Vienna, Austria.