02 Nov Wild margins
Source Credit: Content and images from Wall Street International Magazine by . Read the original article - https://www.meer.com/en/84668-wild-margins
Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present Diana Al-Hadid: Wild margins, an exhibition of panels, works on paper, and works on
mylar by Syrian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Diana Al-Hadid. This show marks Al-Hadid’s second solo exhibition with the
gallery and will be on view November 15, 2024, through January 9, 2025. The gallery will host a reception for the artist on
Friday, November 15 from 4:00 to 7:00pm.
Wild margins exhibits Diana Al-Hadid’s first career exploration of works produced and inspired by techniques of hand-
papermaking learned during her year-long residency at Dieu Donné. As a Lab Grant Resident, an invitation-only residency that
allows mid-career and established artists to explore the art of papermaking, Al-Hadid worked with expert paper makers to
master new processes such as pulp painting, blowout, and stenciling. Calling the paper process “one of the most revolutionary
pieces of her practice recently”, Al-Hadid approaches making these paper pulp works in a similar fashion to her larger mixed
media works, blending layered materials and substrate until completely cohered. Al-Hadid’s experimentation with paper
coincided with the construction of her upstate New York studio leading to a body of work steeped in the inspirations of nature
and its boundaries.
Al-Hadid is known to weave threads between historical, architectural, cosmological, and folkloric themes,
probing the disjunctive and investigating allegories. As a truly immersive and emotive artist, she embodies her work. As she
drew inspiration from landscapes, skies, caves, and florals, her marks became increasingly frenzied, with inks more layered,
allowing denser and thicker images to emerge. These works reflect the uninhabited and chaotic elements of wilderness and
their effects on an artist in process. For a panel work inspired in part by Jan Brueghel’s Allegory of Tulip Mania, Al-Hadid was led
into her own tulip mania. She collected swathes of bulbs, planted shrubs, and flowers, letting the habits of her newfound
environment imprint upon her practice. Her references are never obvious to the viewer; she hints at works that move and
intrigue her, obscuring the narrative but letting the foundations remain. A deeply intuitive artist, Al-Hadid may alter her work
based on temperament, creating compositions imbued with the emotionality of their inspirative stories, histories, and physical
gestures. Al-Hadid often looks at outsider histories – her work asks what it means to be at the periphery. In this case, to
observe nature from the outside, to be at the margins of the natural world – to examine that which encroaches from an edge,
or sneaks in from the corner. Like nature’s untamed edges, Al-Hadid’s works in Wild margins embrace the unruly and wild
edges of paper – while their complex sea of details and masterful fine lines create a body of work so layered and storied it
transcends far beyond the physical realm it occupies.
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. She 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.
Source Credit: Content and images from Wall Street International Magazine by . Read the original article - https://www.meer.com/en/84668-wild-margins