Process
TALA MADANI - CEILING FAN
The Ceiling fan is a repeated motif in Madani’s work. When I first saw this painting I instantly felt a wave of emotions. First, jealousy, because I wish I had painted this image, followed by calm knowing that I had found this painting and then I was shocked as I read the name of the artist and realised that she was also Iranian which gave me an overwhelming sense of belonging. It’s interesting to think of the ceiling fan as a symbol of Iran.
Recently Madani produced a series of paintings of ceiling fans. Fans have long been a subject of fascination for the artist, as sinister objects that literally hang over us, slicing through the air like knives. Fans also gave Madani the opportunity to re-examine the air as a new site for dread and the unknown. The sense of menace in this series seems to appeal to current world circumstances. (TALA MADANI, 2022)
Ceiling fans were a staple part of my childhood in Iran. The ceiling fan is one of my earliest memories. The wooden one in my cousin's dark green kitchen pops into my mind. They renovated and got rid of it sometime in the '00s but I remember how soothing watching it was for me as a toddler. I would beg for them to turn it on and then get really excited watching it speed up and eventually the blades would become a blur. The fleeting moment that cyclically repeats. It was exciting and soothing at the same time. This duality is what Tala Madani is expressing in this exhibition except, her experience of ceiling fans is more comically cynical, like a bad '80s horror flick. She aligns repulsion with empathy and intimacy with the grotesque. This tension created by the duality in her work excites me as it forces your brain to start solving a puzzle.
In this exhibition “…” I like how she has hung the ceiling fans close to the ceiling. The painting becomes a prop. It is a continuation of the metaphorical use of paint that she is acknowledged for. Often when I present my work on the wall I like to curate it in a scattered formation; using the negative space of the wall as an extension of my paintings. The wall unifies my work and the placement is telling of my values for the work. Like how Tala has forced the viewer to look up at the fans to experience them as you would in a domestic setting which in this context is juxtaposed with an industrial lure.
The ceiling fan has made a few appearances in my own work. First when I was doing a series of drawings while recollecting my cousin Habib’s house in Tehran:
Tala likes to capture the motion of the ceiling fan. Since seeing her paintings I have started to turn mine on: