Shit Shot Seagull, 2020
Oil on linen
50,8 x 121,9 x 3,2 cm
[Photo: Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio, © ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy Pascale Marthine Tayou and GALLERIA CONTINUA, by SIAE 2021]
I dipinti di Tala Madani sviluppano modalità di critica di ampio respiro sugli squilibri di potere contemporanei di ogni tipo. Le sue opere spingono a riflettere sul genere, sull’autorità politica e sulle questioni di chi e cosa viene rappresentato nell’arte. Di solito sono popolate da uomini di mezza età e da fluidi corporei.
In Shit Shot Seagull (2020), invece, è un gabbiano ad essere cosparso di escrementi mentre sta volando: nonostante sembri far di tutto per liberarsi, gli escrementi gli immobilizzano le ali tanto che probabilmente, di lì a poco, precipiterà a terra esanime. Questo dipinto fa dunque riferimento all’inquinamento, al disequilibrio ambientale causato dall’uomo e alle continue violenze nei confronti degli animali.
Tala Madani lives and works in Los Angeles. She moved from Tehran to western Oregon, going on to graduate with a BFA from Oregon State University in 2004, and with an MFA from Yale University School in 2006. In 2007, she presented her debut exhibition at Lombard-Freid Projects Gallery, New York. She has shown at the Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2010), Venice Biennale, Venice (2011), Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Göteborg (2013), Marrakech Biennale, Marrakech (2014), Taipei Biennial, Taipei (2014), and the Whitney Biennial, New York (2017), and has work held in numerous public and private collections. In 2012 Madani was awarded the Volkskrant Art Award, and in 2013 she received the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting. In 2007 she was the artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, and she held the Abbey Painting Fellowship of the British School at Rome in 2010.