TALA MADANI (B. 1981)

Drawing from her Iranian heritage where strict social etiquette creates a division between the sexes, Madani’s painting gleefully imagines the ‘goings on’ at men-only events. This playful distortion of cultural and sexual identity is rendered in lush painterly expressionism and loose, almost comical line drawing, lending it both humanizing innocence and humorous nonchalance. Sporting printed fabrics and spurting red and blue, Madani’s men are segregated from reality into a realm of hyperbolized storytelling and darkly comic allegory.