Hans Ulrich Obrist and Etel Adnan remember Zaha Hadid

2016-05-11T12:37:00-04:00

When I visited her for the first time, at the end of the 1990s, I was still living in Paris. A typical London cab picked me up from the airport and brought me to her (at that time, quite small) studio, in which, supported by her young team, there was an atmosphere permeated by futurism. It must have been the same among the Russian avant-garde at the beginning of the ’20s, when they not only started to reshape art, but also society...

"Three months later I visited her again, since I was working intensely on a project at the French Academy in Rome with an installation by Hadid in the garden of Villa Medici," Obrist continues.

"I realized that the same cab driver picked me up. When, some time afterward, I saw him for the third time at the wheel, I asked about this strange coincidence. He explained to me that Hadid had bought herself a cab that was only there for herself and her guests."

Art Forum also published a text by the artist and poet Etel Adnan. Obrist relates that when Hadid's Chanel Pavilion was relocated to the Institut de Monde Arab in 2011, the German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld asked Obrist to put together an opening event. The curator asked three poets, including Adnan to write odes to Hadid.

"Zaha Hadid's entire oeuvre is an invitation to take a trip," Adnan wrote. "Hadid is a poet of forms and of the materials that give presence to these forms; one must admire them close up and from afar to discove...

Zaha Hadid, une architecture at Mobile Art

2011-04-23T13:37:22-04:00

"Zaha Hadid, une architecture" will be the first exhibition held inside the Mobile Art pavilion since the installation of the pavilion in front of the Institut du monde arabe.

Archinect - News

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Etel Adnan remember Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid, une architecture at Mobile Art