Created on the occasion of her first North American survey exhibition Biscuits at MOCA, Los Angeles in September 2022, the 'Cloud Mommies' constitute Tala Madani's most monumental body of work. Big and bright, the paintings are unusually optimistic, even with their intimations of loss. The 'Cloud Mommies' series moves away from the frustration and humour of the artist’s 'Shit Moms' toward a wistful, sometimes elegiac, romantic sensibility. In this series, the artist reflects upon and embraces broadened permutations and analyses of motherhood by summoning the universal pastime of cloud spotting. With wide eyes, children daydream, looking for shapes in the clouds; one may see a dragon while another sees a mountain range. This atmospheric maternal apparition suggests the ubiquity of "motherhood" as a social construction while hinting at its inadequacy: a complex and unfixed concept, it has meanings and emotional valences that are distinct for every person who has ever been a child.


'As fluffy and white as cuddly poodles, the nebulous madonnas on these giant canvases tower high in the heavens, dwarfing the viewer. Barely there stick figures eagerly hold out large bowls to catch droplets falling from the nipples of Cloud Mommy (Milky), 2022, as though she were providential amid drought. For all their apparent optimism, a degree of skepticism also underlies these portrayals of cumulate water vapor, which is, after all, intangible and ever-changing. If the shit moms represent women unable to embody impossible ideals, perhaps the empyreal cloud mommies are the ideals that no one can ever attain. Yet there they float, elusive and shape-shifting, across the sky of the collective unconscious of Madani’s dreams.' – Annabel Osberg, 'Shit Moms and Cake Men: Tala Madani at the Museum of Contemporary Art', Art in America, 8 November 2022

'In “Cloud Mommies”, the mother’sbody has transmogrified from bodily waste to water vapour, ascending from theground into the blue firmament where she floats peacefully along. Close inspection reveals childlike finger-paintings on the paintings’ sublime surfaces: noughts and crosses here, stick figures there.' – Jonathan Griffin, 'Tala Madani: Biscuits review — paintings of sharp scatological satire', Financial Times, 12 January 2023