Beyond Boundaries, Art and Design

Ivorypress presented the exhibition Zaha Hadid. Beyond Boundaries, Art and Design as part of the annual architecture programme celebrated each autumn. The exhibition, which opened on 4 September 2012, sets out a wide view of the artistic body of work of the architect Zaha Hadid (Baghdad, Iraq, 1950), which reflects her personal and unorthodox world-view.

Hadid was the first woman to be recognised with the prestigious Pritzker Award, in 2004, and her tradition-busting aesthetics are in line with such visionary figures as Leonardo da Vinci and Frederick Kiesler. In addition to architecture, her work encapsulates drawing, painting, reliefs, sculpture and installations, as well as furniture and product design. In the words of the exhibit’s curator, Kenny Schacter, Hadid’s world-view is one in which ‘art, design, and architecture collapse into one another to reflect an all-encompassing way of life characterised by pushing and pulling the boundaries of aesthetics in every conceivable manner and form’.

From her London-based studio, Zaha Hadid Architects, Hadid takes the same creative approach with regard to objects such as purses, cutlery, jewelry, decorative objects, or furniture, such as the Zephyr sofa or the Liquid Glacial table. These two pieces, along with a wide selection of works—installations, mock-ups, paintings, drawings, furniture, or even domestic objects—made up an exhibition which succeeded in suggesting ‘a very democratic conception, non-hierarchical in structure, where a building is seen in the same light and with the same import as a spoon’, points out the curator of the exhibition.