All the Stops

Diana Al-Hadid's large-scale sculptures take towers as their central theme, drawing together a wide variety of associations: power, wealth, technological and urban development, ideas of progress and globalism. They are also - both in legends such as the Tower of Babel, and reality, such as the horrors of the World Trade Centre attacks - symbols of the problems of cultural difference and conflict.
As intensely patterned and detailed structures, her works draw from the traditions of Islamic art, where abstract motifs are used to encourage contemplation of God's infinite wisdom and the artist herself describes her work as 'impossible architecture'.
The present work entitled All The Stops envisions a palatial structure, utilising stylistic elements from a variety of incongruous periods from medieval churches to futuristic stadiums. Shaping her work like an upturned trumpet, musical references are found throughout the piece: broken once glorious columns are made from plastic recorders, decorative tiers are shingled with tiny piano keys. The spindly architecture suggests the evasive quality of sound, with each level contributing to a sense of harmonic rhythm. The building however, is presented as a ruin, empty and desolate, its decrepit power culminating in an eerily silent crescendo.
Through the present monumental work, Diana Al-Hadid skillfully mixes her Western and Eastern cultures while projecting a sense of uneasiness that alludes to her own past, as part of an immigrant family in the US.