Tala Madani
Dazzle Men
Tala Madani works on a small scale and a large scale. This work is from a series of small paintings called Dazzle Men that take as their starting point the Dazzle patterns used by artists to camouflage ships during the First World War. Dazzle camouflage was designed to confuse the aim of U boat commanders. Its unstable, brightly colored distortions were closely allied to modernist painting and indeed formed the subject of a memorable series of woodcuts and a major painting by the British Vorticist Edward Wadsworth. In Madani’s painting, Middle Eastern looking men take as their model an image of a dazzleship for the purpose of self-disguise. Applying paint to their bodies, they adopt the strategy of maquillage that is essentially feminizing. Madani thereby satirizes the overly masculine society these men inhabit. While some have applied only small amounts highlighting their breasts, others have applied stripes recalling prison outfits. These men are trapped in their own world, prisoners of the stereotyping that grows out of education, religion, and culture. In conversation with Doug McClemont, Madani stated: ‘I’m interested in the behaviour of the masses. Creating icons, figures and then having later on to destroy. The creation of icons, which then inevitably are destroyed because the icon becomes corrupt, or something. To me, that’s very religious behaviour, needing to put something up on a pedestal. And the mass behavioral tendency of later on of being almost inevitably oppressed by it somehow. Having to bring it down. In a way painting is poking fun at religious behaviour. The masses can behave ridiculously in many circumstances.’
Madani’s paintings have a caricatural quality that suggest a satirical intention. She only paints images of men. This came about initially because she ‘didn’t want to deal with the question of the veil, and I didn’t particularly want to sexualise the figures with perked up breasts, so ultimately I was left with men.’ Since making that statement she has expressed an interest in depicting spaces ‘designated for men only’. Madani’s work can be interpreted as a comment on an overbearingly patriarchal society, whether in Iran or indeed any Western country. Her cartoony paintings expose ethnic and gender stereotypes with a lightness of touch that belies their punch. The painterly nature of Madani’s approach has led her to make films composed of freeze frame shots of paintings that she changes from shot to shot.
Born in 1981, Tala Madani is a young Iranian artist who has lived outside Iran since the age of 14. She currently lives and works in New York and Amsterdam.