Mandy El-Sayegh Spring of Youth (bottega veneta), 2021

Mandy El-Sayegh’s 2021 work Spring of Youth (bottega veneta) is part of her Piece Paintings series, in which she assembles printed and hand-painted fragments of image and text to form the ground of her painting, before layering them with white paint. Unlike her Net-Grids and White Grounds series, in which the artist almost entirely conceals the grounds of her works, in the Piece Paintings, words and photographs are left visible, encouraging viewers to form their own associations between the disparate elements. Next to the images of a Bottega Veneta advertising campaign in the background of the painting, its title might evoke a seasonal fashion show or magazine editorial. In reality, it is a reference to a 1973 raid by the Israeli forces in Lebanon, known as the Spring of Youth Operation. By removing references from their original context and bringing them together on her canvases, El-Sayegh creates densely layered works that occupy an ambiguous space, shifting between desire and violence.