W hat’s the opposite of perfect? Well, shit, according to Tala Madani. For years now the Iranian-born US artist has been painting Shit Mom, a fetid smear of a human figure intended as a subversion of feminine, maternal ideals. And in the painter’s latest show, Shit Mom has a new child in her care: she has adopted an AI daughter.

The rub is immediately obvious: the AI robot represents perfection; Shit Mom its impossibility. As they interact across the canvases, the gleaming mechanical perfection of the daughter – born motherless, hence the show’s title “Daughter BWASM”, or Born Without a Shit Mom – gets streaked with smudges of filthy brown. The more the mum cares for her daughter, the more she taints her. The robot can’t avoid getting moulded in her mother’s image.

The show is one of th

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