Burnaway

Visually and thematically, Al-Hadid draws on Middle Eastern and Western cultures and iconographies, often combining and re-contextualizing wide-ranging historical sources. She has found inspiration in ancient maps, miniature painting, architectural designs and illuminated manuscripts. Her artworks are spatially complex with richly varied surfaces and hauntingly mutable forms. Despite their structural integrity and skilled fabrication, a sense of ruination pervades them. Nothing is Stable derives its title from Al-Hadid’s description of the improvisational and unpredictable nature of her artistic processes. The phrase equally accommodates the artwork’s impression of fragility and ruination, its material and perceptual contradictions and its construal of history as a living and ever-changing process.

from the accompanying exhibition text by Associate Professor of Art History Susan Richmond

Diana Al-Hadid: Nothing is Stable is on view at The Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Gallery in Atlanta, through March 5, 2021.