Tala Madani in "Los Angeles" - Season 8 | Art21

[soft electronic music]

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

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

How fast you can actually get
to wilderness

in Los Angeles is brilliant.

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

the things that inspire you.

Oh, look at that light.

Oh, magnificent.

[Gasps]

♪ ♪

It's so close.

The moon is
very close.

♪ ♪

[Keys jingling]

It's a great studio, but...

a painting studio, what do you
need?

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

Different paintings have
different origins,

but mostly there is an idea in
the very beginning.

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

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

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

make it happen.

So I was just really
interested with the idea that

there is a really recognizable
face,

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

So I start making a lot of
sketches, basically.

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

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

and then I think what really
solved it was the idea

that they should have
Hitchcock kind of shadows.

I was thinking about an
ideology of the smiley

that surrounds a smiley about
peace.

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

as a force,

and when their behavior was,
uh, forceful,

uh, then certainly they're not
that benevolent.

Something else in the show
that I was really interested in

in general was light.

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

and then somehow, when I was
working on them,

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

religious light, and I thought
it would be interesting

to think about how this
religious light is now replaced

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

is, I guess, much more
controlled.

There are a lot more religious
references than I've

ever had before because the
smileys seem to be

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

I was really interested in the
clash not the clash,

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

the adaptation of one culture
by the other,

whether violently through the
smiley cutting off the nose

of another guy to make him
more like the smileys

or with through desire, that
there is this sort of

budding pushing-closer

of the two systems.

You know, sometimes adopting
another culture

can go sometimes wrong, you
know?

In Los Angeles, the landscape
being so open,

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

of you.

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

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

thoughts.

I was born in Tehran, Iran,

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

It was culturally, uh, very
informative.

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

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

how, um, Iran is perceived
outside of Iran,

more than anything else, and
you become aware of

well, especially somewhere
like, um, rural Oregon,

you know, which is not very
metropolitan.

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

had moved to Los Angeles,

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

I think there is a proclivity
for people to read

into the figures as from Iran.

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

Mexican men.

Focusing on a group of men in
my work

more than a kind of
equilibrium

between a subject of man and
woman,

it's not coming necessarily
from a personal experience

of having women being
segregated.

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

is because of my curiosity,

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

it's much more speaking to my
own limitations

of entering spaces...

which I then work through in
my work

on some level.

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

Some of them are just empty
canvases, of course,

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

something.

This figure was trying to fly
with feathers,

and I thought that was quite
a, um, that

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

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

lead.

In a way, they're like
sketch books,

but in painted form.

For any painting

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

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

might lead to little other
moments, basically.

Painting is actually quite
difficult.

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

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

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

and easy and uncontrolled way,

so to embrace not just in the
image,

but also in their painted
attitude,

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

As a painter, my sense of
storytelling

happens to be satirical or
funny.

It certainly loosens up your
unconscious

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

This is a little corner I've
made

for making some animations

that I'm working on at the
moment.

So this is the, um,

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

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

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

The animation's going to be
about...

two minutes, maybe two minutes
and a half,

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

So far, it's just a few steps

of a figure coming into the
space.

This animation will have a
voice.

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

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

what the voice of God will
sound like.

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

a real background, a filmed
background.

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

I'm really interested in this
relationship

between adults and kids,

you know, the potential

of what the kids are capable
of

and what the adults are
capable of.

The stories that maybe are the
fundamentals

of, uh, western cultures are
very much

about the kids replacing the
adults,

you know, with "Oedipus Rex."

But a lot of mythologies in
Iran

are actually that the parents
kill the kids,

sometimes by mistake.

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

are stronger with the adults.

The way the paintings portray
the figures

as sometimes childlike or
behaving badly

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

being victimized or being
pulled at.

I think I'm much more
interested in our

in our culture that looks

at those particular gestures

and finds fault in it.

For me, I think the salvation

is to behave like children.

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

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

The redemption is--is through
this misbehavior,

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

as sort of behaving very badly
says

about level of oppression that
we put on ourselves.

[soft electronic music]