Diana Al-Hadid’s sculptures are a masterclass in duality. They seem both ancient and modern, fierce and delicate, simultaneously growing and disintegrating—reminding us there is no such thing as a fixed state. It’s art of the both-and. “In all senses, I’m interested in the literal and metaphorical, the specifics and the general,” the New York–based artist says.
In “Women, Bronze, and Dangerous Things,” her debut solo show with Kasmin gallery, on view in Chelsea now through December 22, Al-Hadid presents almost two dozen sculptures, Mylar drawings, and works on paper pulp that embrace these dichotomies. In her hands, industrial materials such as polymer gypsum, fiberglass, steel, and bronze coalesce into entirely new worlds that confront notions of identity, function, and home. It’s work to take time with, up close and in person.
Like Al-Hadid’s earlier work, this collection, made over the last five years, references mythology, architecture, art history, and religious motifs of Islam and Christianity. In The Bride in the Large Glass (from 2023, the title a nod to Duchamp), a figure in a cloak-like garment holds forth in Kasmin’s main gallery space. Regal and haunting, her head is some kind of Celtic cross. Her cloak, made of delicately overlaid strands of bronze, seems an impossibility: It’s gothic but light and airy, like moth-eaten gauze that somehow stands up on its own. “I was trying to make bronze not feel so heavy and fixed, and I wanted to build it by hand,” Al-Hadid says. The garment pools in the back, like lava, with hints of gold glistening in the light.
The Bride in the Large Glass is pictured at front left. Mother Splits the Moon in back middle.Photo: Courtesy of Kasmin Gallery.
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