Diana Al-Hadid: Liquid City

Diana Al-Hadid’s 22-foot-long sculpture Nolli’s Orders (2012) will anchor SJMA’s central skylight gallery like an aged, baroque fountain enlivening a public piazza. Nolli’s Orders refers to the 18th-century Italian architect and surveyor Giambattista Nolli, famous for his 1748 map of Rome. Al-Hadid’s towering and exuberant sculpture also evokes Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s (1598‒1680) landmark Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers), built in 1651 in Rome’s Piazza Navona. Diana Al-Hadid: Liquid City spotlights the artist’s personal emphasis on creative process. It will include several wall works that pertain to architectural themes, including sculptural pieces of polymer gypsum, drawings on mylar, and several drawings on vellum from the artist’s personal collection. Primary source materials such as a section of an etching of Nolli’s map and a select group of works on paper by Piranesi, Pomodoro, and other old masters to whom Al-Hadid refers, will also be included. Liquid City is one of a trio of exhibitions in which San Jose Museum of Art celebrates water and encourages visitors to reflect on the precious yet public nature of this natural resource.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.