Tala Madani

"As its title suggests, Shit Moms is filled with mother figures and meditations on motherhood. Madani takes a literal approach to this colloquial phrase used to describe mothers who fail their children, painting pictures of female bodies formed from a brown, sludgy substance that immediately evokes excrement. In many cases these mothers are seen in the process of being sculpted by small, cherubic children––they are mothers formed according to the libidinal wills of their offspring; in others, a caress or embrace from the mother leaves the otherwise oblivious child stained with filth. In the absence of a pristine mother or an angelic one, the shit mom will have to do, and the actions of the children in the paintings suggest that a shit mom is better than none at all. These characters, as well as the detailed, filmic spaces and architectures they inhabit give the haunting sense that these are pictures dredged from the unconscious world of dreams and fantasies. Tableaux occur in modernist apartment buildings, abandoned houses, darkened disco halls, and on sunlit beaches where the ocean beckons as a place for baptism or dissolution. ..." --From the David Kordansky Gallery's description.