‘It’s quite difficult to admit the size of the hole we’ve fallen in, because a lot of my energy comes from imagining a better Iran.’
 (The artist in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist in Tala Madani Rip Image, exh. cat, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2013, p.113).

Los Angeles based artist Tala Madani has fascinated collectors and art aficionados worldwide with her powerful humour, her prolific imagination and her artistic and astute social commentary.

Drawing on her Iranian heritage where strict social etiquette creates a division between the genders but also inspired from her vast American art knowledge of the works of Sue Williams and Lee Lozano amongst many, Tala Madani’s works are humorously imagined and often carry an ironic portrayal of the culture of femininity and masculinity stereotypes and often the rendering of animated men-only events.

In the seminal work The Chorus Madani envisions the nature of relationships and the notion of sound. This playful distortion of simultaneous cultural and explicit sexual identity is rendered with a loose brushstroke and comical lines generating a cartoonish work lending it both humanising innocence and humorous nonchalance. The simplistic colour palette and a clear flatness of the painting highlight its rich narrative and heavy irony whilst depicting a darkly comic mise-en-scènes.

In The Chorus, repetitive flat patterns with increasing size of the motif, intended to portray a large mass or collective, run left to right across the composition that stand out against a field of greyish beige. The motifs seem to come from infinity in waves, beyond the limits of the canvas. Subtly connoting female sexual body parts they also coherently appear as smiley faces. The playing of the duality between sexuality and humour is a reference to the concept of play which is an essential aspect of Madani’s work as a whole that is particularly poignant in this work. Exaggeration with a provocative purpose, visible in the repetition and the almost childlike looseness with which the painting is achieved leaves it open to interpretation, sometimes with unruly fantasy.

Through her distinctive painting technique, Madani imbues recurring symbols and imagery with a complexity that cannot be reduced to any single reading. Products of curiosity, fantasy, and desire, Madani’s paintings provoke a cacophony of interpretation that exceeds mere commentary. Tala Madani was part of the prestigious exhibition Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East by the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2009 and has been exhibited in numerous Biennales and some of the most admired museums such as MoMA P.S.1 among others.