The Instigative Musings of Tala Madani
Photography by Brigitte Lacombe
Interview by Karen Leong
Tala Madani is concerned with the doctrine of absolutes. In her artistic practice, Madani’s approach is layered with comedy, philosophical mus- ings and the throbbing reciprocity of life and politics. As we spoke, Madani articulated her stance on the curriculum of the Western canon, injecting humour into the macabre and resisting the powerful currents of nostalgia. Working across animation and painted canvas, the Iranian-American artist puts forth a provocation for all artists: Make your trade and your mark in the art world an incendiary one.
A-M Journal: Cartoons and cinema are sometimes considered low-brow references in the art-world. How does your art challenge these beliefs?
Madani: I wonder if that’s true anymore. Since the 1960s, the broad use of cartoons has made that language fair play in the art world. My drawings might look more like caricatures because of the speed with which I make them. So many artists have challenged the high and low categorisations.
A-M: [Andy] Warhol, obviously.
Madani: Ad Reinhardt is also interesting. His minimalist practice and, later in his career, his caricatures – they all feel so relevant now. I don’t think the audience looks at art like that anymore. So, I don’t grapple with that, but obviously we’re in a global world. So, I acknowledge I’m speaking from a Western-audience context. I expect painting to be as revolutionary and forward-thinking as other art forms have been. We experience such a po- lyphony of visual languages that there is no high and low; it becomes about creating meaning and significance.
A-M: And how do you feel about those contexts if we pivot towards your use of nudity?
Madani: I don’t use nudity, really. I think about the economy of clothes: it’s always a singlet, or slacks. They suggest my own attitude towards what you feel to be a desire for comfort. Their attire might suggest homeliness and casualness.
A-M: It doesn’t have to be an overarching statement. Positioning bodies in comfort itself is inherently political.
Madani: That’s right. ‘Shitmom’ never has to wear anything, but again she isn’t nude, she’s ‘Shitmom’.
A-M: What are you currently consuming in music, literature, shows, or in life?
Madani: I like to media-jump for inspiration, so I’m looking at cinema, liter- ature and music. I deep-dive into a director’s work for a month, or read one writer for a while. I’ve been watching a lot of Federico Fellini’s work with my husband, Nathaniel [Mellors]. I love the choreography of the performers in Fellini films and how his work and style shifts from decade to decade. Yesterday I was really enjoying André 3000’s latest album, New Blue Sun, which reminds me of Pharaoh Sanders and Philip Glass – it’s great.
A-M: What about Fellini is compelling for you?
Madani: His relationship with the audience is an interesting one. The sets are very theatrical. So much of our cinema today feels quite interested in clarity. But in Fellini there’s delight in absurdities. Through absurdities we access a more psychic space. It isn’t always so clear. But we seem to need clarity too. I’m interested in that ’60s and ’70s approach that combines the absurd with really big themes and seriousness.
A-M: How do you think moving through the unconscious – and Fellini’s own approach to movie-making – speaks to your own artmaking?
Madani: One’s work is a thesis on one’s philosophy.
A-M: I love that.
Madani: Yeah, your art is just a point on a bend, a hold in your own life. That’s what I’m currently thinking about. Why do we need clarity in our work right now? What am I losing when I choose clarity? Broadly speaking, philosophy is how you position and self-identify within community, politics, nature. When you’re a culture producer, you have to constantly evaluate the waves that you’re swimming in. More broadly, what’s happening to us as a collective – and what you think is more important. You’re not floating in the waves, you’re swimming on with purpose.
Humour seems to escape us. In today’s world it can be a lifeline, by way of 152 being able to keep on fighting.
A-M: To stay afloat. It’s a universalising factor.
Madani: I don’t mean to suggest humour to make light of things, but to show our humanity and to bridge our fear towards each other. In this sphere, the cultural sphere, as a community we are interested in values like freedom of speech, of life, of our utmost potential. In that, we are each other’s allies to- wards real oppressive forces, which seem to be expanding and coalescing everywhere.
Semantic details in humour, for instance, help us think of how many collec- tive and non-collective traumas are surfacing, to keep us from hurting each other. Humour to get closer to one another. That sincerity in artworks, even though everything is hit and miss – you know you can go two steps too far and go the wrong way. It’s interesting how artworks work psychically. When something feels like it’s influencing you, it can feel repellent.
A-M: Humour is the conduit towards getting to understanding one another.
Madani: Totally. And towards art. Touching things that are too hot to touch; it’s like a mitten.
A-M: What is the reception you wish your work to impart onto an audience, if at all?
Madani: I don’t know what point everybody is at with themselves. Even during the day we change, depending on the time. One thing I do want to pose is the desire for revolutionary, ambitious artmaking. Not to say that mine is, but I think that should be the goal of the profession. To push our own consciousness of the profession and not just to swim in nostalgia. A mind that is interested or busy with nostalgia feeds off itself. This can be in every field... Like, “Remember the good old days!”.
But for being an artist, and being an Iranian artist – or any maker that comes from a minority culture entering a dominant culture – there seems to be two possible routes: one is [Vladimir] Nabokov, who migrates to America, learns English and goes on to write some of the greatest works of fiction in the English language.
“It’s the intention, and what’s interesting. Where, how and what to put your mind to. That’s the work, to figure that out. If everyone else is doing it, don’t do it. We can at least do the thing that we know isn’t it.”
A-M: He’s one who moved within that channel.
Madani: The other possible direction is feeling like the culture doesn’t see you, or feel you, and you get busy trying to educate a whole dominant cul- ture about where you come from because they don’t understand. That’s how you get conservative work, because the artist is so concerned with the loss of that culture and is only busy redecorating the house with familiar objects, because they are in trauma, basically.
A-M: A perfect allegory for all immigrants.
Madani: And we’re all immigrants nowadays – who isn’t, in this globalised world! Out of the two, Nabokov is the route I want to follow. The first is art, the second is trauma speaking louder than the artist.
A-M: How do you ensure you don’t follow the second route?
Madani: It’s just consciousness, and tons of failures. It’s the intention, and what’s interesting. Where, how and what to put your mind to. That’s the work, to figure that out. If everyone else is doing it, don’t do it. We can at least do the thing that we know isn’t it.
A-M: Deliberately going against the grain. With your collectivist inclination in mind, what is your current focus as an artist, or as a creative going about the world? What intentions do you have regarding work and life, in general?
Madani: I try to hold a critical perspective towards myself and the energy around me... What seems to be happening.
A-M: If I ask you to share one moment which shaped your artist’s journey, does anything spring to mind? How did that pave the way for your work today?
Madani: I don’t really have a moment. In all truthfulness, it feels accumula- tive. I always tell my students when I teach art that you can’t teach it, you must learn it. When you’re digging and looking, it’s the active participation that teaches you. Without that reciprocal interest, I can’t imagine how every second doesn’t lead to that feeling. Every small incident counted.
A-M: More of an overarching collection of moments?
Madani: Exactly.