The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University is thrilled to announce the upcoming survey exhibition unbecoming by Diana Al-Hadid that questions how constructions of femininity take form over time, a development that can be understood in part by thinking through Al-Hadid’s research and artistic process.

Based in New York, Al-Hadid works prolifically between painting, sculpture, and more recently, handmade paper. Born in Syria in 1981, Al-Hadid moved to the United States as a child. She grew up in Ohio, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kent State University, and a Master of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University. Al-Hadid’s work draws on diverse sources ranging from art history to Greek mythology, and global literature. Her visual language emerges from an astute sense of materiality that culminates in specific abstractions; these works defy how we think about both materials and sculpture and in turn, work to unravel the ways of thinking we may see as “normal.”

“Since Al-Hadid completed her MFA, questions of gender and womanhood have been central themes within her artistic practice,” commented Dr. Rachel Winter, assistant curator at the MSU Broad Art Museum and curator of unbecoming. “Specifically, this survey attends to the ways that the artist is constantly subverting our expectations about materials and form, but it also uses this approach to question the ideologies held in society, works of art, and literary references. I’m thrilled for the opportunity to explore this aspect of her work in detail by looking at her first large-scale sculptural work Spun of the Limits of My Lonely Waltz, as well as a series of new works on paper that will make their debut in this exhibition, and numerous paintings and sculptures across nearly two decades of work.”

Opening in June 2025, the exhibition invites us to look closely and consider how the materials in the artist’s work both break down and accumulate into their final form. In turn, we are prompted to reflect on how expectations about womanhood and femininity are similarly constructed but they can also be deconstructed to imagine different futures.

“The MSU Broad Art Museum has increasingly been focused on the role of the Midwest in shaping larger narratives in the arts and contributions to culture more broadly. In partnership with Diana through this exhibition, we continue this work while highlighting one of the most significant artists working today,” said Steven L. Bridges, interim director of the museum. “We’re very proud to present the artist’s first solo exhibition in Michigan, which brings forward important and timely conversations around notions of femininity and womanhood, while also celebrating her roots.”

Al-Hadid’s reworking of materials and form is a process that models how we can similarly transform the social expectations about womanhood and women’s behavior to instead find the power in being “unbecoming.”