Institute of Contemporary Art Miami ICA Miami

Tala Madani (b. 1981, Tehran, Iran) makes paintings and animations whose indelible images bring together wide-ranging modes of critique, prompting reflection on gender, political authority, and questions of who and what gets represented in art. Her work is populated by mostly naked, bald, middle-aged men engaged in acts that push their bodies to their limits. Bodily fluids and beams of light emerge from their orifices, generating metaphors for the tactile expressivity of paint. In Madani’s work, slapstick humor is inseparable from violence and creation is synonymous with destruction, reflecting a complex and gut-level vision of contemporary power imbalances of all kinds. Her approach to figuration combines the radical morphology of a modernist with a contemporary sense of sequencing, movement, and speed. Thus, her work finds some of its most powerful echoes in cartoons, cinema, and other popular durational forms.

Madani has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle (2024); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2024); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2022–2023); Start Museum, Shanghai, China (2020); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2019); Secession, Vienna, Austria (2019); Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (2019); La Panacée, Montpellier, France (2017); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2016); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO (2016); Nottingham Contemporary, England (2014); and Moderna Museet, Malmö and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2013). Recent group exhibitions include The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL (2024); Burning Down the House: Rethinking Family, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2024); 50 Paintings, Milwaukee Art Museum, WI (2023); The Seventh Continent, 16th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2019); Whitney Biennial 2017, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and Made in L.A. 2014, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Madani’s work is in the permanent collections of institutions including Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Malmö, Sweden; Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tate Modern, London, England; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Madani lives and works in Los Angeles.

Erkka Nissinen (b. 1975, Jyväskylä, Finland) lives and works between Helsinki and Hong Kong. In 2007, he was artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. His work consists of videos, performances and comics. He won the Illy Prize in Rotterdam in 2011 and the AVEK Prize for media art in 2013.

Nissinen’s works are concerned with looping logic, bootless searches for meaning and the absurdist humor to which these things give rise.  Though absurd to the point of nonsense and often obscene, Nissinen’s work is far from being meaningless. Rather, it discloses a critical take on the difficulties of social interaction, on philosophy, and on the language of media -such as children’s television, educational programs, or porn, often all mashed up into one. Nissinen does so by means of video, drawing, computer-controlled lights, robotics, performance, and sound.

Erkka Nissinen, alongside Nathaniel Mellors, represented Finland at the Venice Biennial in 2017. His work has been included in international public and private collections such as Kiasma, Helsinki Art Museum HAM, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Gouda, and Museum De Hallen, among others.