Culture Now: Tala Madani in conversation with Jessica Morgan

Tala Madani joins us for this lunchtime talk to discuss her work and practice with Tate Modern curator Jessica Morgan.

Madani's expressive brushwork and bold palette combine to depict darkly comic mise-en-scénes, with many of her works exploring uncomfortable scenes of balding, middle-aged men participating in absurd scenarios that walk the line between playful and violently perverse. Symbols and images recur throughout her work, yet these motifs cannot be reduced to any single reading. Rather, she turns the associations we have with the archetypes she engages on their heads, allowing for a multitude of interpretations that reflect on the tensions between the stereotypical and the iconic.

Tala Madani was born in Tehran and received her MFA from Yale University School of Art. She has had recent solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Pilar Corrias, London, and was included in group shows in Europe and the United States including Greater New York, P.S. 1 MoMA, New York; and Younger Than Jesus, New Museum, New York. She lives and works in Los Angeles.