Featured Works and Installations

In Focus: Diana Al-Hadid and Ahmed Alsoudani

Alsoudani’s Untitled

One drawing each by Diana Al-Hadid and Ahmed Alsoudani— on loan from a private collection—bring a counterpoint to the calm and timeless atmosphere of the Twin Oaks foyer this summer. These two internationally-celebrated contemporary artists are sometimes shown together since their practices are shaped by the experiences of conflict, migration, and cultural transformation. For as different as the two works are visually, both are rooted in a dialogue with the rupture and fragmentation that characterize many people’s perspective on life today.

Al-Hadid’s Untitled

Al-Hadid (b. 1981 in Aleppo) and Alsoudani (b. 1975 in Baghdad) create deeply personal works that speak to broader questions of identity, memory, resilience, and belonging. Both were displaced by armed conflict in the Middle East and emigrated to the United States. They pursued their artistic training (focused on painting) at our nation’s leading art schools and successfully pursue their global careers from studios based in Brooklyn. Their paintings, drawings, and murals move within each artist’s perspectives on their lived experience and imagination. Both weave together fragments of history, mythology, and contemporary life to create powerful works of art that resonate broadly.

Both artists are part of an influential generation of diasporic Muslim voices whose work has helped redefine the contemporary art landscape in New York and beyond. Presented in dialogue, these two works invite viewers to consider how personal histories can illuminate shared human experiences, revealing the enduring power of art to transcend borders and bear witness to both loss and possibility.

In Focus: Untitled, Escape, Collage

 

In this piece, a mix of wax and black soap streaks across ceramic tiles and fragmented stock images of palm trees and African masks. Johnson’s use of masks is both a nod to his upbringing in a family that embraced African ancestry and a provocation about ownership and identification. His relationship with these images is ambivalent, as Untitled Escape Collage registers the complicated closeness and distance that comes with being a subject of diaspora while questioning who has the right to employ specific cultural motifs. Masking also suggests concealment, hidden emotion, and the assumption of different versions of the self. As suggested by the title, a tension of escapism underlies this piece. The stock images of palm trees symbolize the dream of escape while speaking to that dream’s artificiality and unrealized status. Scattered lines and smudges of oil across the work animate a frenetic, anxious energy, and the composite of cut photographs rejects the notion of a coherent and singular self.

At Home with Lady Normanby: A Regina Music Box Suited for Royalty (1899)

This remarkable example of mechanical music, donated to the Museum by Murtogh Guinness’ sister, Lady Normanby, recently underwent significant funder-supported restoration.

Leadership support for this exhibition is provided by Will and Mary Leland.

Artwork captions

Ahmed Alsoudani, Untitled, 2012. Charcoal and acrylic on paper. Courtesy of Waqas Wajahat, New York.

Diana Al-Hadid, Untitled, 2012. Charcoal, Conté, pastel, and watercolor on vellum. Courtesy of Waqas Wajahat, New York.

Rashid Johnson, Untitled, Escape, Collage, 2018. Ceramic tile, mirror tile, vinyl, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap, and wax. On loan courtesy of the Art Bridges Foundation

“Sublima Corona Style No. 32” Coin-Operated Disc Music Box, 1899. Manufactured by the Regina Music Box Company, Rahway, New Jersey. Gift of the Dowager Marchioness of Normanby (1920–2018) in Memory of her Brother, Murtogh D. Guinness. Collection of the Morris Museum. 2005.18a-g. Photo by Tim Volk.