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[soft electronic music]

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Tala Madani: People always come to
L.A. for the stars,

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and that's what we're going to
do today.

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How fast you can actually get
to wilderness

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in Los Angeles is brilliant.

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And I think, you know, you
have to kind of find

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the things that inspire you.

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Oh, look at that light.

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Oh, magnificent.

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[Gasps]

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♪ ♪

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It's so close.

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The moon is
very close.

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♪ ♪

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[Keys jingling]

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It's a great studio, but...

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a painting studio, what do you
need?

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You just need some paint, some
brushes, some space.

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Different paintings have
different origins,

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but mostly there is an idea in
the very beginning.

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It might not be very sort of
like a verbal idea,

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but it's still an idea of,
like, you want this to happen,

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and then you have to figure
out how the image will work to

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make it happen.

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So I was just really
interested with the idea that

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there is a really recognizable
face,

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and there is no requirement of
a nose for this face.

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So I start making a lot of
sketches, basically.

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I started with this color, and
then I sort of couldn't

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make sense of the orange, so
it became all black and white,

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and then I think what really
solved it was the idea

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that they should have
Hitchcock kind of shadows.

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I was thinking about an
ideology of the smiley

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that surrounds a smiley about
peace.

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I started to think about him
as a dogma, as a presence,

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as a force,

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and when their behavior was,
uh, forceful,

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uh, then certainly they're not
that benevolent.

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Something else in the show
that I was really interested in

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in general was light.

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I think I'm also interested in
the word "projector."

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and then somehow, when I was
working on them,

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the light of the projector
reminded me a lot of a kind of

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religious light, and I thought
it would be interesting

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to think about how this
religious light is now replaced

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by the projector, and that's
the source of the light,

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is, I guess, much more
controlled.

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There are a lot more religious
references than I've

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ever had before because the
smileys seem to be

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like a cult, and that led to
thinking about other cults.

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I was really interested in the
clash not the clash,

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per se, but the sort of
getting closer, adopting,

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the adaptation of one culture
by the other,

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whether violently through the
smiley cutting off the nose

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of another guy to make him
more like the smileys

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or with through desire, that
there is this sort of

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budding pushing-closer

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of the two systems.

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You know, sometimes adopting
another culture

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can go sometimes wrong, you
know?

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In Los Angeles, the landscape
being so open,

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you're not really bombarded
with a lot of things in front

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of you.

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And there's not a lot of
hindrances to sort of, like,

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plow through every day to get
to your thoughts, your own

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thoughts.

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I was born in Tehran, Iran,

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and I left Tehran at 15 and I
came to Oregon.

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It was culturally, uh, very
informative.

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Obviously I was, you know,
taken out and brought somewhere

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and it made me really probably,
uh, what it taught me most was

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how, um, Iran is perceived
outside of Iran,

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more than anything else, and
you become aware of

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well, especially somewhere
like, um, rural Oregon,

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you know, which is not very
metropolitan.

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I mean, it would have been a
very different experience if I

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had moved to Los Angeles,

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surely, because there are just
so many Iranians in L.A.

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I think there is a proclivity
for people to read

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into the figures as from Iran.

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If I was a Mexican artist, the
audience would read them as

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Mexican men.

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Focusing on a group of men in
my work

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more than a kind of
equilibrium

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between a subject of man and
woman,

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it's not coming necessarily
from a personal experience

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of having women being
segregated.

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I think, for me, the reason
that I started focusing on men

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is because of my curiosity,

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that in the same way that I'm equally interested in sort of
male locker rooms in America,

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it's much more speaking to my
own limitations

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of entering spaces...

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which I then work through in
my work

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on some level.

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Well, they're not necessarily
even, uh, going to be works.

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Some of them are just empty
canvases, of course,

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but some of them are, you
know, they're beginnings of

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something.

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This figure was trying to fly
with feathers,

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and I thought that was quite
a, um, that

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that's just sort of still
somewhere around somewhere for me.

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So, you know, yeah, just
keeping some things I could

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lead.

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In a way, they're like
sketch books,

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but in painted form.

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For any painting

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that happens, you know, you do
so much and some might even

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don't happen, so this is a few
of them that might lead to...

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might lead to little other
moments, basically.

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Painting is actually quite
difficult.

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I think that's why I'm really
interested in it,

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is that it's not something
that comes really easily.

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And in a way, I try to sort of
paint them in a really loose

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and easy and uncontrolled way,

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so to embrace not just in the
image,

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but also in their painted
attitude,

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that level of freedom, that
level of pure life, joy.

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As a painter, my sense of
storytelling

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happens to be satirical or
funny.

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It certainly loosens up your
unconscious

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to be able to come out in ways
that it couldn't otherwise.

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This is a little corner I've
made

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for making some animations

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that I'm working on at the
moment.

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So this is the, um,

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it's a piece of wood board
that's been painted

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with acrylic, and then you can
just make the mark,

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take a picture, and erase it
and then come back again.

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The animation's going to be
about...

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two minutes, maybe two minutes
and a half,

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and for that, there will be
about 1,700 frames.

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So far, it's just a few steps

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of a figure coming into the
space.

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This animation will have a
voice.

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Yeah, and it's going to be
really interesting.

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It's going to be the voice of
God, so I have to imagine

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what the voice of God will
sound like.

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This was the first animation
where I, um, also had

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a real background, a filmed
background.

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I--I get a very, um, naive
pleasure from them.

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I'm really interested in this
relationship

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between adults and kids,

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you know, the potential

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of what the kids are capable
of

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and what the adults are
capable of.

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The stories that maybe are the
fundamentals

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of, uh, western cultures are
very much

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about the kids replacing the
adults,

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you know, with "Oedipus Rex."

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But a lot of mythologies in
Iran

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are actually that the parents
kill the kids,

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sometimes by mistake.

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So, yeah, so we'll see if the
kids, um...

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are stronger with the adults.

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The way the paintings portray
the figures

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as sometimes childlike or
behaving badly

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or not knowing who the
aggressor is, and if they're liking

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being victimized or being
pulled at.

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I think I'm much more
interested in our

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in our culture that looks

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at those particular gestures

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and finds fault in it.

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For me, I think the salvation

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is to behave like children.

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So, in a sense, the true
oppressor is the frontal lobe.

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The true oppression would be,
like, the controlled behavior.

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The redemption is--is through
this misbehavior,

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and I think the--the fact that
we would judge them

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as sort of behaving very badly
says

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about level of oppression that
we put on ourselves.

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[soft electronic music]