EMΣT is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Greece of the internationally acclaimed Los Angeles-based Iranian artist Tala Madani. Entitled Shitty Disco, it is the first museum exhibition of the artist in Europe in more than a decade. Bringing together more than forty paintings, drawings and stop-motion animations, it highlights various themes that have run through the artist’s work over the past fifteen years.
In her multilayered work, Madani creates enigmatic scenes, depicting human figures at their most vulnerable, private, violent, absurd, and perplexing moments. Gangs of naked, clumsy, middle-aged men engaged in self-destructive activities, mothers covered in faeces, giant babies and other archetypal characters smeared in their bodily fluids all appear as couriers of a bitter and sarcastic message about human nature. Moving steadily between immediacy and ambiguity, Madani dismantles preconceived gender roles and stereotypes to explore power structures, sexuality, group dynamics, westernised and idealised notions of family, and the construction of identity.
Frequently referencing the visual language of cartoons, Madani’s often self-deprecating characters defy the laws of physics and engage in impossible degrees of senseless yet tragi-comic violence which brings a welcome degree of comic relief to a bleak scenario. Light is central to many of the artist’s paintings, connecting her work to cinema and art history. Flashlights, projectors, and other unlikely sources create artificial, invasive beams that end up exposing the characters and exasperating the awkwardness of the depicted scenes.
Since 2007, Madani has made brief stop-motion animations, many of which are presented in the exhibition. Each animation consists of about 2,500 still images, quickly painted sequentially and recorded with a camera frame by frame. In sequence, the images present an imagined world that conveys a feeling of distress and absurdity while closely resembling our real world. With dark humour and biting wit, Madani explores the social references of basic human emotions such as anxiety, anger, fear, loneliness, abandonment, dependency, paranoia, envy and lust.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by Madani’s works of the same name. Made especially for the show at EMΣΤ, Shitty Disco (2024) depicts a metaphysical nightclub, a place that moves between fantasy and nightmare, invoking film, technology and different states of consciousness. For the exhibition, Madani has also created a series of new site-specific wall paintings, which cover the four imposing columns in the centre of the exhibition space. Two further works by the artist, part of the D. Daskalopoulos Collection Gift, are also on view in the renewed collection exhibition, entitled Women, together, on the 3rd floor of the museum.
Press release from EMΣT
Image: Tala Madani. Prism sighting. 2012. Oil on linen. 36.2 x 28.6 cm. Collection of Vanessa Branson
