Formally the paintings are almost stage-like—delineated by very few spatial markers. A near constant is the presence of light. Sometimes a light source is suggested, say a spotlight or a beam emanating from flashlights or projectors, but often its origin remains mysterious: softly glowing illumination enters through gridded openings, read as window frames. In recent years her figures too have manifested as luminous blurs, ghost-like presences made of light, or as veils floating in an invisible breeze.

Madani has placed her paintings in the context of modernist abstraction. Yet in her work these iconographic references—color field, grid, even the blur—are bound to a belief in the body’s expressive intelligence in the act of painting. Not biography, then, but perhaps “sensibility” may be a more fitting entry point, as the artist’s sense of humor, her emotional and pictorial intelligence are palpably present throughout the work.

—Dr. Isabelle Moffat, 2021