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TALA MADANI
About the Artist
Tala Madani (b. 1981, Tehran, Iran) lives and works in Los Angeles. The distinctive feature of Madani’s work is the way it succeeds in balancing social critique, humour and a challenge to the art historical canon. The artist explores scenes of power and patriarchy through recurring symbols and a complexity that precludes single readings. Her painting deconstructs taboos, exposing social norms with dark humour and mischief. Through her art, she questions notions of gender and authority, fantasy and desire, and the role of the artistic subject.
Madani studied painting at Yale University and visual arts and political science at Oregon State University. She has been the recipient of numerous awards such as the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting in 2013 and the De Volkskrant Art Award in 2012. She has participated in prestigious exhibitions such as the 16th Istanbul Bienniale in 2019 and the Whitney Bienniale in 2017. In 2020, the Secession in Vienna held a solo exhibition of the artist’s work titled Tala Madani: Shit Moms, and in 2022 the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles held a mid-career retrospective of her work.
Madani’s striking paintings explore the tensions between the stereotypical and the ironic.
Her characters are inspired by children’s tales as told by Disney and the graphic novels of Alan Moore and Robert Crumb. The artist’s pictorial language is punctuated with repeated objects such as fans – suggesting movement or a clearing of the air – which she uses as a tool to distribute and propel faeces.
Tala Madani. Photo: Jersey Walz
WORKS IN THE COLLECTION
Tala Madani, "Shit Moms (Run at the Sun)", 2021
Ink and oil on linen, 203.2 x 203.2 cm
Courtesy the artist and David Kordansky Gallery
The Shit Moms series challenges the role of motherhood that women are often expected to perform. The title clearly refers to a mother who is bad, or ‘shit’, at her job. With characteristic sarcasm, Madani creates a raw and unfiltered insight into parenthood and how this can tie into a loss of identity. Her maternal figures are not pristine, posed or divine, like the traditional icons of motherhood perpetuated in art history. The series emanated from the artist’s own experience of motherhood and the pressure to perform her role, particularly as a young, working mother.
In Shit Moms (Run at the Sun) two shit-confected mothers run across a wide, open field towards the light, in pursuit of freedom and, perhaps, salvation. Light is a key motif in Madani’s paintings. It does not signify the conventional notion of God’s spiritual presence, but displaces desire and control, manipulation and obfuscation. The polarity between the figures’ diminutive fragility and the expansive landscape provides further narrative cues. Ultimately, ‘shit moms’ are no longer alone and there is the promise that the end of their odyssey of isolation and social judgement is in sight.
Tala Madani, "Roller Coaster", 2021
Oil on canvas
80.2 x 65.3 cm
Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias
Part of what makes Madani's painting so arresting is the push and pull between spaces associated with cheerfulness, such as is here with the playground, and the drama that emanates from the scenes. In Roller Coaster, a chain of ghostly, gloomy and emasculated looking men seem resigned to head to their downfall. Madani lends her characters a rare expression of self-consciousness and shame but offers them no redemption. Set against the bright blue sky, a broken roller coaster awaits the fate of these men. There is an evident crack in the rails but it starts again beyond the picture frame. The tension is palpable, but it is not obvious whether the train ride carrying our shamed protagonists will fall into the abyss or make it to the other side unharmed.
The male protagonists in Roller Coaster reflect Madani's sharp and deprecating observations of the patriarchy. These "shit men" are bundled up as smeared silhouettes with no grit, rendering them laughable and nauseating at the same time.