Diana Al-Hadid

Diana Al-Hadid (A ‘07) 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 sculptures, panel works, and works on paper are built up with layers of material and history. Her rich, formal allusions cross cultures and disciplines, drawing inspiration, not only from the history of distant civilizations, but also from histories of the materials themselves.

She 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. She has been the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Grant, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, and a Pollock-Krasner Grant. She is also a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow. Between 2018 and 2019, her large public installations were in a traveling exhibition to Madison Square Park, New York, NY, Williams College, Williamstown, MA, and Cheekwood Estate and Gardens, Nashville, TN. Al-Hadid was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1981 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

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Born and raised in rural Pennsylvania and based in New York, Rob Swainston (A ‘07) is an Assistant Professor of Art+Design in Printmaking at Purchase College and Master Printer for collaborative printshop Prints of Darkness. His art sits at the intersection of printmaking, painting, installation, and sculpture. Rob received a BA in Political Science and History from Hampshire College and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. With this dual focus, Rob claims: “All images are historically negotiated assemblages between humans, machines, materials, and social structures. In a society where social knowledge and power have become pure image, the print technologies historically central to this transformation can act as double-agent. Artists working in print media can be chameleons moving between image-makers and image-reproducers.” Rob has been awarded numerous residencies including Skowhegan, Marie Walsh Sharpe, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Solo and group exhibitions include Marginal Utility, David Krut Projects, Bravin Lee Programs, Socrates Sculpture Park, Smack Mellon, Munson Williams Proctor Museum of Art, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, IPCNY, Canada Gallery, Queens Museum, and the Bronx Museum. Rob is presently the Ludwig Foundation Professor for Printmaking at the Weissensee Kunsthochschule Berlin for 2020-21.

Diana Al-Hadid on producing “Hindsight”:

Rob (Swainston) and I started working on the print before COVID hit New York City. I made various images with the expectation of layering them after we saw proofs—lots of mountains, some volcanoes erupting, and some of the woman in the mountain from Hans Memling’s ‘Allegory of Chastity’ (a painting I’ve been pretty obsessed with for a few years now). After quarantine, we returned to the proofs and I found that three images, when lined up together, suggest another allegorical narrative. The woman sitting in the crest of the mountain stands between an intact mountain and an erupting volcano. It seemed appropriate to leave the three black and white images as they were, side by side as a triptych, a reflection of the life the print lived from start to finish.

To view the artists' process, click HERE .