Inside “the mess” that has inspired a triple bill of solo exhibitions
Prodrome Anatomy, 2022, by Mandy El-Sayegh © Alex Lockett
Today, she is dressed all in black – a vest top, paint-splattered jogging bottoms and fluffy black slippers, her mermaid-long hair coiled away from her face. Her studio – the nexus of a practice that spans painting, installation and performance – sits between her bedroom and a library, “a chaotic archive” crammed floor-to-ceiling with inspiration, ranging from pages of anatomy books to copies of the“I don’t throw anything away,” she explains. “It’s more like hoarding than collecting.
You can read [my] work forensically, piecing together my story, or equally you can look at it as abstract paintingAfter graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2011 with an MA in painting, El-Sayegh worked as a carer for young adults with non-verbal autism for five years. “But because of the government cuts it became a really sad state of affairs – especially for the service users,” she says. “But [that job] also wasn’t good for me. And that was when I realised that I could only do this.
For Julia Peyton-Jones, curator and senior global director of Thaddaeus Ropac, the “build-up of all the references – her personal history, the history of art, and the world around us – is utterly fascinating.” She highlights the way in which El-Sayegh’s painterly palette often resembles bruised flesh – she “deals with the bruising elements of the human experience”.Back in her studio, El-Sayegh picks up a medical journal from the floor.
In 2020, she suffered a breakdown. “I couldn’t stop pacing. So there was no capacity to sit and paint. My work is all about breakdowns of systems and rebuilding of form, and I guess that happened to me in my body and psyche.” FT Weekend Festival returns on Saturday September 2 at Kenwood House Gardens, London. Book your tickets to enjoy a day of debates, tastings, Q&As and more . . . Speakers includeand many others, plus all your favourite FT writers and editors.
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