Diana Al-Hadid Syria, b. 1981

Diana Al-Hadid (b. 1981, Aleppo, Syria) is a Syrian-American artist who currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work examines the historical frameworks and histories that shape common discourses on culture and materiality today. Spanning sculpture, wall reliefs, and works on paper, the artist weaves commonly known and esoteric narratives together in order to draw inspiration from both ancient and modern civilizations. Her rich allegorical constructions are born from art historical research, religious imagery, ancient manuscripts, female archetypes, and folkloric storytelling frameworks. 

Al-Hadid constructs forms that are a baroque complex of architectural structures and figurative allusions which appear to be in a state between construction and deconstruction. With a host of references from antiquity, cosmology, cartography, and architecture, Al-Hadid’s work gives form to ghostly images abstractly rendered in a range of materials such as steel, polymer gypsum, fiberglass, wood, foam, plaster, aluminum foil, and pigment. While Al-Hadid borrows from architectural histories, as a deeply processe- based and emotive artist, she allows the works to unfold intuitively, often using her own movement and negotiation of space as a guide to her sculptural forms. 

Born in Aleppo, Syria, Diana Al-Hadid's family immigrated to Cleveland when she was five years old. Al-Hadid received a BA and a BFA in sculpture from Kent State University, and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2007, she was resident of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and in 2009, she was a USA Rockefeller Fellow and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She was the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2007), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2011), and The Academy of Arts and Letters Art Award (2020). In 2021, she was awarded a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship to conduct research at the Freer Gallery of Art. Her mosaic murals for NYC’s Penn Station were among 100 finalists for COD awards, an international competition honoring public commissions that integrate interior, architectural, or public spaces. Al-Hadid was one of four artists commissioned for a site-specific work at the Princeton University Art Museum.

Diana Al-Hadid has given lectures at the Nasher Sculpture Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum, Yale University, Carnegie Mellon University, to name a few. For her first major public art project Al-Hadid was commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy, New York and exhibited by Mad. Sq. Art, the contemporary art program of the Madison Square Park Conservancy and later installed on the campus of Williams College. She has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue, Art21, Hyperallergic, and The Brooklyn Rail. Her work can be found in numerous museums and private collections.