Diana Al-Hadid’s Trace of a Fictional Third

Diana Al-Hadid’s Trace of a Fictional Third

Al-Hadid’s sculptures often seem in a state of flux, suggesting both incompletion and decay. A wide array of sources underlie her complex forms, including Biblical and mythological narratives, Arab oral traditions, Gothic architecture, Western painting, Islamic ornamentation, and scientific advances in physics and astronomy.

In Trace of a Fictional Third , landscape, architecture, and the human figure are interwoven. Here Al-Hadid revisits time and motion in the sculpture’s cascades, undulating fabrics, and human figures that seem both corporeal and spectral.

The sculpture rises from a cluster of pedestals to form an irregular pyramid. Two figures—one low, the other high—and the viewer, implicated as the “fictional” third figure, form points of an overall triangle.

Elements of painting are also present, with horizon lines and linear perspective, puddles and drips of color, and imagery suggesting mountains and clouds in an open-ended, dreamlike scene.