How this artist's transformative work reimagines the female form
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A solid female torso in a classical pose drips on its pedestal. A ghostly, white figure seems to melt while it floats in the air. A mountain spiders out from a woman's outline at its peak, while it dissolves at its core. Artist Diana Al-Hadid's work likes to play with matter in-between two states.
The artist is interested in how materials can transform before your eyes depending on what details you choose to focus on, such as the wetness — or the solidity — of plaster. Al-Hadid says she uses her materials as "connective tissue" to pull the image together, describing her work as "a cross between fresco and tapestry."
![](https://cdn.artscanvas.org/static/2019/08/006_Al-Hadid_In-Mortal-Repose_Jason-Wyche_crop3-1024x683.jpg)
Now an exhibit of her work called "Subliminations" is on view at the Frist Art Museum and Cheekwood Estate & Gardens in Nashville, Tennessee. Her works explore the transformation from one state into another — like from liquid into gas. Her use of the metaphor of transformation also reflects her thoughts about representations of women in art.
In "Lionless," Al-Hadid plays with the art history trope of treating women as part of the scenery. In the piece, she riffs off Hans Memling's painting "Allegory of Chastity," which depicts a young woman surrounded by crystal mountain peaks that rise up to her waist like a skirt, and a pair of lions protectively perched nearby. The painting "Lionless" is Al-Hadid playfully shaking up the painting by removing the lions that guard the woman and dissolving the mountain around her.
![](https://cdn.artscanvas.org/static/2019/08/016_Al-Hadid_Lionless_Press-Rodriguez-926x1024.jpg)
"It's a really bizarre painting," Al-Hadid said of Memling's painting. "I've been working with that image and kind of examining that relationship of women treated as landscapes or imagined as landscapes."
Al-Hadid said that the woman in the Impressionist painting didn't read like a victim to her and instead was "kind of corking a volcano, and she's very poised and seems comfortable and confident."
This report originally appeared on Nashville Public Television's "Arts Break."
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