Mandy El-Sayegh Top Ten
Mandy El-Sayegh is an artist based in London whose practice is rooted in assemblage. She works in a wide range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation, performance, video, and sound.
01 COCKROACH TOTEM
I was gifted a polished stone cockroach talisman last year. It’s the studio security guard. This creature announced itself to me in 2020, when I was going through a funk. After years of it reoccurring in nightmares, I found one, onyx black, static at the foot of my bed. I trapped it under a glass, observed and slept with it for a few days, and eventually came to identify with it. My medium friend said that power animals are often things you fear because they can relate to the survivalist strengths you suppress in waking life. Cockroaches represent resilience and adaptability to ever-changing environments. They incite revulsion and are targeted for extermination, but some say they can survive nuclear radiation, so they’re not going anywhere.
02 FRANTZ FANON’S CASE STUDIES
The case studies from Franz Fanon’s clinical practice, notably the ones found in the last segments of his 1961 book Wretched of the Earth, are often treated as footnotes in the wider discourses of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. They are raw archives that cannot be assimilated by the frameworks we currently occupy. They bring in the uneven ground of empire, disrupting the power dynamic between analyst and analysand. Fanon’s premature death at thirty-six, among other reasons, meant his legacy in psychiatry was neglected. I was speaking with artist Kader Attia and he remarked that Lebanese analyst and activist Lara Sheehi is fiercely taking up where Fanon left off, by connecting psychoanalytic practice (which is often individualized) to wider political struggles, in spite of pushback and hostility in the field.
03 MICROPORE SURGICAL TAPE
I grew up with this repurposable material around the house. Both my parents used it: my mother, a midwife, for work and my father to connect to his dialysis equipment. Old drawings and collages still have this tape on them; it’s better than Pritt stick because you can remove and replace delicate bits without damage. Even the most fragile tissue paper will remain intact. It’s gentle yet robust and much better than masking tape.
