In her paintings, table vitrines, immersive installations and videos, Mandy El-Sayegh creates layered anthologies of found text and images from a variety of sources. These include newsprint, advertisements, aerial maps, anatomy books and her father's Arabic calligraphy, which take on unexpected new meanings through proximity. Set adrift from their original contexts, these fragments become open to multiple readings that are personally, socially or politically determined and undermine the supposed objectivity of language and media. Moving between material, corporeal, linguistic and cultural frameworks, El-Sayegh highlights the constant flux of meaning that is shaped by environment and individual experience.
By emphasising the boundaries of her chosen medium, El-Sayegh draws attention to the systems that determine how information is categorised, contained and understood. She creates 'quasi-archives' in her table vitrines, suggesting associations and references through the objects' placement in a shared, delineated space. In her Net-Grid canvases, overpainted grids simultaneously structure and obscure the detritus of popular culture. These paintings also reference the primacy of the grid in modernism, which El-Sayegh found alienating: 'I felt that there was a whole set of systems that I did not know, like a joke that I didn't get'. Instead, she creates 'forms [that] bring about questions of legitimate and illegitimate readings of culture and context', as well as the implicit power structures that determine who legitimises such readings.
The notion of corporeality is crucial in El-Sayegh's work – she refers to her collage process as 'suturing' and her painted surfaces as 'skins'. In her site-specific installations, newsprint and silkscreened texts are plastered onto the walls and floor with layers of latex that suggest medical associations or tattooed skin. The artist often incorporates the Financial Times, chosen both for its stature as an authority on global finance and the flesh-pink tone of its pages. The metaphor of the body grounds these elements in a universally recognisable register: 'we all have bodies, regardless of our context, political leanings, and time contingencies'. However, our individual experiences within those bodies are shaped by external systems that, in turn, affect how we interpret El-Sayegh's works.
Born in Selangor, Malaysia, El-Sayegh lives and works in London, where she received a BA in fine art from the University of Westminster in 2007, followed by an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in 2009. Her first solo institutional show, the specially commissioned installation Cite Your Sources, was held at London's Chisenhale Gallery in 2019. Her work has also been shown in exhibitions at the Sursock Museum, Beirut, Lebanon (2019); SculptureCenter, Long Island City, NY, USA (2019); The Mistake Room, Guadalajara, Mexico (2018); Instituto de Visión, Bogotá, Colombia (2018); Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China (2017); and the New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1, Queens, NY, USA (2016), among others. She was shortlisted for the biannual Max Mara Art Prize for Women in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2017.
2022
Mandy El-Sayegh: Units of Measure, UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Mandy El-Sayegh: Still, evident (notes on dreams), Lehmann Maupin, Palm Beach, FL, USA
2021
Mandy El-Sayegh: Figure One, Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Marais, France
Protective Inscriptions, Lehmann Maupin, Seoul, South Korea
2020
your words will be used against us, Harlesden High Street, London, UK
2019
Mandy El-Sayegh: The Amateur and problems with metaphor, Home Works 8: A Forum on Cultural Practices, Sursock Museum, Beirut, Lebanon
Mandy El-Sayegh: White Grounds, Bétonsalon, Paris, France
Dispersal, Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong
Cite Your Sources, Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK
2018
MUTATIONS IN BLUE, WHITE AND RED, Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY, USA
Mandy El-Sayegh: assembled at Tell el Ajjul, The Mistake Room, Guadalajara, Mexico
2017
Figured Ground: Meshworks, Carl Kostyál, London, UK
2016
Mandy El-Sayegh: Taking Part, Galerie Mihai Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania
This is a sign, Carlos/Ishikawa, London, UK
2022
Saturation, Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Pantin, France
Time, and time again – Works from the Vermeire-Notebaert Collection, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium
British Art Show 9, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and University of Wolverhampton School of Art, Wolverhampton; Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen; The Box, KARST, The Arts Institute’s Levinsky Gallery and The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth; HOME, Manchester Art Gallery, Castlefield Gallery, The Whitworth and the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), Manchester, UK
2021
When I Count, There Are Only You..., Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Body Topographies, Lehmann Maupin, London, UK
Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London, UK
Mandy El-Sayegh & Lee Bul: Recombinance, Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY, USA
2020
Words at an Exhibition: an exhibition in ten chapters and five poems, Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Busan, South Korea
A Focus on Painting, Thaddaeus Ropac, London, UK
your words will be used against you, Frieze LIVE 2020, The Institute of Melodic Healing, London, UK
Our ashes make great fertilizer, cur. Saelia Aparicio and Harminder Judge, PUBLIC Gallery, London, UK
Inside Out: The Body Politic – McArthur Binion, Mandy El-Sayegh, Lee Bul and Tony Oursler, Lehmann Maupin, Seoul, South Korea
2019
Searching the Sky for Rain, SculptureCenter, Long Island City, NY, USA
Ecologies of Darkness, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Germany
2018
Deterioro y Poder, Instituto de Visión, Bogotá, Colombia
2017
Lessons in Agronomy, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China
The Mask Makers, cur. Marcel Dzama, Independent Art Fair, Brussels, Belgium
Boundary Work, Sharjah Biennial 13: Tamawuj, cur. Christine Tohme, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
2016
Room Services (with Oscar Murillo and Yutaka Sone), New York Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, Queens, NY, USA
For Pete’s Sake, Carl Kostyál, Stockholm, Sweden
2011
Elizabeth House, London, UK
Responsive Eye, London Gallery West, London, UK
Painting Degree Show, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2010
Painting Interim Show, Royal College of Art, London, UK
China
Start Museum, Shanghai
United Arab Emirates
Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah
UK
Kamel Lazaar Foundation, London
Collection Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo, London
USA
Institute of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL
2017
Shortlisted for Max Mara Art Prize for Women, in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK