The photo above is of one of the sculptures part of Diane Al Hadid’s “Delirious Matter” exhibit at Madison Square Park. I, personally, really enjoyed looking at and studying each of the sculptures that are part of the exhibit. They are all rather abstract and it is not directly obvious as to what is depicted, ergo each and every person who looks at the sculptures may have a different disposition or opinion of it, or may interpret the meaning behind it differently, depending on many different variables, such as each person’s nationality, cultural or familial upbringing, or even something as trivial as the person’s mood. I found this abstraction to be the central theme among all the sculptures that are a part of Al Hadid’s exhibit and each of the sculptures incites different emotions and opinions in each person.

Although the entire exhibit consists of six sculptures all-together, I gravitated towards this wall-sculpture most, for numerous reasons. Firstly, I believe that this sculpture, specifically, gives each person who studies it a lot to think about as it is uncertain to see what the sculpture is. I think that this may be among the most aspects of the work as a whole, since it allows each person who passes by and looks at it (the number of which is probably in the thousands each day, as it is in a public park available to everyone) to create their own opinion of what the piece is depicting and what message Al Hadid is trying to convey.

Personally, I believe that the meaning of the wall-sculpture has much to do with the artist’s, Diane Al Hadid’s, cultural upbringing and personal history. She is an immigrant from Syria who moved to the United States as a child and says ““I was educated by Modernist instructors in the Midwest, but also was raised in an Islamic household with a culture that very much prizes narrative and folklore.” This merging of modern artistic views and traditional familial and cultural values is very prevalent in the entire exhibit, and this wall-sculpture particularly.

From what I have read about this sculpture, the inspiration for this sculpture stems from Wilhelm Jensen’s book about a mythological female character, Gradiva, that describes an archaeologist who scoured the ruins of Pompeii in search of visage which metamorphoses into his childhood love¹. I feel that this idea of transformation is implied in the sculpture itself as there are small holes in the piece that allow people to see through it to the other side, almost permeate through it, thus giving the viewer the opportunity to delve into the sculpture much like the protagonist of the story that served as the inspiration for the sculpture.