Mob Mentality
Opening Reception and Artist Lecture: Thursday, February 23, 7pm
Diana Al-Hadid’s monumental sculpture Nolli’s Orders (2012) will anchor the SJMA’s central skylight gallery like a baroque fountain enlivening a public piazza in Rome. Referring to Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 map of Rome, the sculpture brings together themes from architecture, the history of art, and urban planning. Al-Hadid is fascinated by boundaries—where something begins and ends and how we define or belong to a place, (be it architectural, sculptural, or experiential). She explores the spaces between two-dimensional mark-making and three-dimensional sculpture, the real and imagined, interior and exterior, belonging and alienation, the ruin and the yet-to-be-completed. Diana Al-Hadid: Liquid City spotlights the artist’s personal emphasis on creative process. It will include wall works that pertain to architectural themes, including sculptural pieces of polymer gypsum and drawings on mylar from the artist’s personal collection. Primary source materials by Italian masters to whom Al-Hadid refers will also be included.
