Tala Madani’s work provokes strong reactions. Her iconography of male figures—rotund, scantily clad, and excreting bodily fluids, solids, or mysterious beams of light in scenes of degradation and humiliation—has often been read as biographical material. Madani, who lives in Los Angeles, grew up in Iran through her early teens, and the men in her paintings have been narrowly interpreted as Middle Eastern. Yet as the artist herself has pointed out, their physical qualities needn’t be ascribed to Persian males. Her series entitled Shit Moms, begun in 2019, continues to address taboo topics: in this instance, feces and motherhood.

Madani’s figures are caught in the moment. There is no invocation of past or present; they never present as fully-formed subjects, but rather as glimpses of affect. One can sense the simultaneity of contradictory emotions, characteristic of the illogic of dreams—or of the unconscious which, free of linear time, causality or volition, appraises the world from a perspective beyond our conscious control. The paintings register as metaphorical representations, with an emotional resonance exceeding their depicted subjects.