Tala Madani’s ‘Shit Mom’ paintings attempt to conceive of a new way of representing the unidealised female figure. Madani’s depiction of women is new and fresh; and that new and fresh way happens to be the shit way. The paintings contend with an immensely taboo idea: that of the less-than-perfect mother. Madani’s ‘Shit Moms’ are made of a malleable viscous substance, to be formed and deformed by the infants who run amok in each of the paintings. Crucially, the children in the paintings do not merely represent children, but also whatever the current idea of ‘new’ is: new culture, new generation, the latest... the next. The series seeks to make manifest a power play between the old and the new. The female figure in Shit Mom (Remodel) seems to tolerate her powerlessness, her formlessness.