“Chit Chat” by Tala Madani at MOMA

It was heavy raining yesterday. Although the weather was bad, I visited MOMA. It was surprising that there were more visitors than before. I often go to MOMA because I like the modern art. To be honest, I have only some knowledge about MOMA because I took the art history class and I did study a lot. By the way, yesterday was a little bit different. I mean whenever I visit MOMA, I just enjoy watching arts. However, at that time, I should find the art made by an artist from outside Europe and the United States. It was not easy to find it. The modern art has been popular in Europe and the United States. I think arts made by artists from Europe and the United State accounts for more than 85% in MOMA. I found many artworks from Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and so on. Only one art caught my eyes and made me watch it more than 10 minutes. That is “Chit Chat” made by Tala Madani. She was from Iran. This art was made in 2007. This is a video art running about 3 minutes. According to MOMA, “Chit Chat” is silent, stop-motion animation video consists of over two thousand painted images per minute. I’d like to tell what I felt watching this video art. Two men look like having an argument about something. There is the third person who wants to get into this argument but he can’t. Background color has changed into a dark and the third person has disappeared with an astonished face. Dark color and ugly face mean that they have a fight. Also, disappearing the third person says that two men don’t care about other people around them. Two men keep arguing each other. They sometimes look a gentle face and one person gets his hand into his mouth. After that, they are vomiting and their face changes into a red face. It looks like they are getting pain. Vomiting color is yellow and then accumulated vomiting has changed into the third person. He shows up again but he looks like a devil, not a human. So, two men are surprised. The third person is disappeared again. Two men keep vomiting. At that time, it changes into many people. They are watching two men and two men recognize them. However, people look like angry. Why do two men vomit? I guess they speak bad words to each other. Bad words make each other dirty. It seems like they eat dirty ones so they feel queasy. And their words are harmful and uncomfortable to other people around them. That’s why the third person shortly looks like the devil and later other people get angry. Of course, two men have their own issue to figure it out. However, they should not do damages to other people. It tells that we need to each other even if they are directly not related to us. We live together. I didn’t try to understand what the artist talk about with this art. I just feel what the art shows to me. Everybody can have different responses and various views of the same art. The literature is same. Sharing ideas, we can know how people have different ways to think. It helps us to understand each other. In fact, the art itself is a mediator to link us.

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