Diana Al-Hadid «Mock Sun»

«Layer after delicate layer of this appendage speak of sorrow, but its creamy color induces a sense of awe, perhaps because it beckons death. Should we read a prayer for it, or blow and watch it turn into dust?»— Myrna Ayad, Artforum

It’s with great pleasure that Galleri Brandstrup present «Mock Sun», our first solo exhibition with renowned artist Diana Al-Hadid. The exhibition consists of three sculpture, a series of wall panels and two works on mylar.

Born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1981, Al-Hadid immigrated as a five-year-old child to Ohio, USA. Her art is often described as metaphorical bridges between the Middle Eastern world of her early childhood and the Western world she now inhabits. She is known for a practice that spans media and scale and examines the historical frameworks and perspectives that shape our material and cultural assumptions. Al-Hadid’s works carry with them indications of a diverse set of interests and inspirations, including mythology, architecture, literature cosmology and physics, to investigate intersections that materialize through exchange and appropriation.

Al-Hadid is known for her elevated sculptures and wall panels which seems to melt or harden, caught in a chemical phase change from one state to the next. She has developed a unique process of using a specific chemistry of traditional and contemporary materials are made of simple, often delicate or fragile materials, such as polymer gypsum, thin-gauge steel rod, plaster, fiberglass, wood, polystyrene, cardboard, wax, and paint.

The wall panels balance somewhere between fresco and tapestry, they seem to almost float on the walls. In «Mock Sun» these art works are directly inspired by the German 16th-century manuscript «The Book of Miracles», a book that is one of the most spectacular discoveries in Renaissance art, a result of protestant Europe which created a “boom” in compendia of miracles. Amongst these was this luxury manuscript produced in the Imperial City of Augsburg, only recently rediscovered. It combines pious episodes from the Bible and dazzling, bold paintings that could have come from a scientific treatise on astronomy visions, in rich, luminous detail.

The book has been a direct inspiration for the artist, but has been altered and transformed through Al-Hadid’s technique and process. However, the subject matter is the same and always relevant; human’s everlasting immutable longing for grace, for mercy, and for the miraculous. The subjects are universal and timeless, and Al-Hadid finds herself reflecting apocalyptic anxieties that emerge during times of dramatic cultural shifts.

The lofty sculpture showed in «Mock Sun» is also a reference to art from centuries past. The lofty sculpture portrays a woman on top of a large structure. The work is a reference to a well-known oil-on-wood painting called «Allegory of Chastity» (1479) by Hans Memling, portraying a woman piously standing in the center of an imposing mountain. The painting reflects the patriarchal ideal of protecting feminine virtue from both external threats and internal desires. Al-Hadid finds Memling’s work quite amusing, as the woman is even protected by two lions, ready to defend her chastity at any point. As a comment Al-Hadid has earlier made a piece titled «Lionless», proposing a playful corrective. The sculpture in «Mock Sun» depicts a woman erupting from her mountain skirt, restraining it into a porous cascade of gypsum, freeing the young woman, almost six centuries too late, from the restrictive bonds that held her.

Al-Hadid received a BFA in Sculpture and a BA in Art History from Kent State University in 2003, and an MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond in 2005. She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007. In 2018 and 2019 Al-Hadid has exhibited “Sublimations” at First Art Museum and Cheekwood Garden, “Temperamental Nature” at Berggruen Gallery, “Delirious Matter” at Williams College, “Delirious Matter” at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, “Delirious Matter” at Madison Square Park Conservancy. She has also executed the permanent installation “The Arches of Old Penn Station” at 34th street Penn Station Stop in New York.