What’s the opposite of perfect? Well, shit, according to Tala Madani. For years now the Iranian-born US artist has been painting Shit Mom, a fetid smear of a human figure intended as a subversion of feminine, maternal ideals. And in the painter’s latest show, Shit Mom has a new child in her care: she has adopted an AI daughter.
The rub is immediately obvious: the AI robot represents perfection; Shit Mom its impossibility. As they interact across the canvases, the gleaming mechanical perfection of the daughter – born motherless, hence the show’s title “Daughter BWASM”, or Born Without a Shit Mom – gets streaked with smudges of filthy brown. The more the mum cares for her daughter, the more she taints her. The robot can’t avoid getting moulded in her mother’s image.
