Tala Madani: Daughter B.W.A.S.M.

Pilar Corrias, London, UK

On view until January 17, Daughter B.W.A.S.M., Tala Madani’s latest exhibition at Pilar Corrias, showcases a selection of works by the Los Angeles-based artist that collide the mythologies of motherhood, modernism, and machine logic into a grotesque and hilarious mess—led, once again, by her recurring anti-heroine: Shit Mom. Her work continues to provoke and amuse in equal measure, always keeping the viewer just slightly off-balance—sometimes repulsed, often laughing, and never let off the hook.

Taking Francis Picabia’s 1916 painting Fille née sans mère (Daughter Born Without a Mother) as a conceptual springboard, Madani draws a century-long line from the machine aesthetics of modernism to today’s fantasies of AI perfection. In her world, the “daughter born without a Shit Mom” is no sleek android, but a mechanical offspring thrust into an absurd relationship with her creator—a mother figure made of excrement, dysfunction, and unfiltered care.

Across paintings and two new animations, Madani deepens her surreal meditation on parental failure, bodily collapse, and technological anxiety. In S.M. Ascends (2025), Shit Mom climbs staircases in an endless loop, each ascent ending in reset—her Sisyphean motion echoing the futility of progress. In Shitmom Learning How to Walk (2025), she stumbles into Eadweard Muybridge’s early motion studies of women, attempting to mimic their gestures and failing with endearing, messy persistence. Far from offering critique through cynicism, Madani’s paintings—dense with humour, empathy, and decay—tenderly dismantle the impossible ideals projected onto both mothers and machines.

For more information, please visit Pilar Corrias’ website here.