Tala Madani: Biscuits

Edited by Rebecca Skafsgaard Lowery and Ali Subotnick
Contributions by Evan Calder Williams, Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Skafsgaard Lowery, and Ali Subotnick

Designed by Content Object, Kimberly Varella
Softcover with full flaps, 224 pages
Publisher: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and MACK, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-913620-80-6
Dimensions: 9.125 × 11.625 in.
Separations: Echelon Color, Santa Monica, CA, and MACK, London, UK
Printing: Printed and bound in Italy


Tala Madani: Biscuits, presented at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is the first North American survey of the Iranian-born, LA-based artist’s paintings and animations. Gathering almost twenty years of work, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue is a mid-career survey of Madani’s irreverent instincts and compelling forms.

The catalogue features a tactile limp bound cover with full flaps, featuring Madani’s Blackboard (Further Education) and a handwritten title treatment. The cover is offset printed using two hits of white and black ink on green paper to mimic chalkboard. The book acts as three in one, navigating Madani’s work and process through shifting colored pages and three distinct parts: sketchbook, essays, and plates. The pages offer a textured field of references, archival material, and dialogue between fellow contemporary artists, offering distinct insights into Madani’s practice. This ode to Madani’s visual languages and characters is articulated via essays commissioned from Evan Calder Williams and Maggie Nelson, each offering distinct insights into Madani’s practice. The sketchbook section reveals a rare look at Madani’s process and foreshadows the plates section—which offers an uninterrupted look at eighty artworks, detailing her work since 2005.

Photography by Ian Byers-Gamber