giovan n i bat t ista p ir anesi , The Gothic Arch, 1761, from the series “Carceri d’Invenzione” (Imaginary Prisons); Etching on laid paper; Photo: akg-images / Liszt Collection.
and a generational logic. Nolli’s Orders is not a map of Rome, but a vision of a “placeless place,” a liquid city. Fluid and elusive, it dislocates a geographic sense of belonging to a constantly shifting and unstable domain appropriate in an era of mass displacement. It is a peopled environment caught in mid-sentence, and we are left wondering how it will end. Lauren Schell Dickens Curator
notes See the introduction to Ian Verstegen and Allan Ceen, eds., Giambattista Nolli and Rome: Mapping the City before and after the Pianta Grande (Rome: Rome Center Architecture & Urban Planning in Italy © Studium Urbis, 2013). 1
2
Steven Litt, “The Akron Art Museum salutes Diana Al-Hadid, a Kent State grad in search of art world success—on her own terms,” The Plain Dealer, November 27, 2013.
3
Diana Al-Hadid, “Magic Mountain” (MFA thesis, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2005), p. 2.
4
The artist quoted in Robin Reisenfeld, “The Labyrinth in the Tower: A Conversation with Diana Al-Hadid,” Sculpture 28, no.2 March 2009, p. 28.
5
ibid., p.27.
6
Zygmunt Bauman. Liquid Modernity (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 2000), p. 82. 11