Visiting Artists Diana Al-Hadid

The Syrian artist Diana Al-Hadid’s massive, often apartment-size sculptures explore subjects ranging from ancient architecture to pipe organs, all in various states of disarray and made from relatively inexpensive materials like chicken wire, cardboard and polyurethane foam. The artist (who had her first solo museum show in 2010 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles) is now part of the group show “Invisible Cities” at the MASS MoCA and will have a solo show in September at Marianne Boesky.

“Nollis Orders,” her contribution to “Invisible Cities,” and which I had the pleasure of viewing in various states of production, is a sprawling achievement, comprising many of the themes Al-Hadid has tackled in the last few years:

“This piece began about a year and a half ago, and in that time I also finished about five large sculptures, so it has benefited from discoveries made from those works along the way,” she explained. “I’ve been working with the figure for the past few years, and wanted go a bit further and create a small ‘population’ of figures. I pulled them out from Northern Renaissance and Mannerist paintings, and isolated them so they were no longer entangled among each other or locked inside the narrative of the original setting. This is how I began, levitating the figures above a series of pedestals — or ‘buildings’ — arranged on a grid. I then became primarily engaged with them as compositional elements rather than as characters in a story Germany Soccer Jersey, curious to see how much I could remove and what would remain. It was another exercise in the mass-to-void balancing act, and in trying to get the thing to change as one rotates around it.”

Name: Diana Al-Hadid

Place of origin: Born in Aleppo, Syria; grew up in northeast Ohio.

Current location: Brooklyn, N.Y.

Current project: Some “blind” bronze busts and a few disappearing “fresco” wall pieces.

Motto: helpmefindmotto_stilldonthaveone@yahoo.com

Best thing you’ve seen lately — not your own: The glass flowers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

Any hidden talents? Tetris. I’m also pretty good at hiding things.

What’s next? My solo show at Marianne Boesky Gallery is coming up in September.