Artist Mandy El-Sayegh: "I’m trying to process this reality, because none of it makes sense.”

Описание: ”I’m trying to process this reality, because none of it makes sense.” In a studio where news headlines repeat, colours bleed into one another, and images of horror stare back without resolution, we meet artist Mandy El-Sayegh, whose work begins from a place of overload rather than clarity—a world saturated with fragments that refuse to settle into a single meaning.

Born to a Malaysian mother and Palestinian father, Mandy El-Sayegh speaks of a “broken syntax” – an upbringing shaped by migration, expectations, and the pressure of inherited ambitions. Art came accidentally, and diving into it felt “naughty”, El-Sayegh says: “I think it’s something about language not being satisfactory and you are kind of unconsciously building a language out of necessity.”

In 2020, Mandy El-Sayegh went into what she describes as a “full-blown psychosis”: “That inner world that I pull from and consciously make work from became a very persecutory reality on the outside, talking to me,” she continues: “People think that psychosis is like a loss of brain function, but actually, you’re hyper-functioning. Everything is a sign. Everything has a meaning; there are no metaphors. If you think about how an artist works, they work from a place of intuitive association and a loose association.”

In the studio, we see fragments of newspapers, family photographs, and images from the Abu Ghraib prison. An overload of images and language, a reality that must be processed before it can be shared: “I think it’s all an experiment of empathy,” El-Sayegh says when asked about the gore in the imagery. Tortured bodies, dead bodies are presented in mermaid hues: “At first, I was so shocked by it, I couldn’t compute it. (…) It’s almost like through others; I can feel the horror because it’s such a deadening that’s happening with the image and its reproduction.”

“Art is something that doesn’t have a function but is a proof of our subjectivity and singularity.” In this world, nothing is neutral, and nothing is resolved. It seems that El-Sayegh’s practice is less about producing objects and more about creating a dialogue: “It’s proof that I exist and I’m received.”

Mandy El-Sayegh (b. 1985, Selangor, Malaysia) 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 work has been shown in exhibitions at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2025); Art Basel Parcours (2024); Overbeck-Gesellschaft - Kunstverein Lübeck (2023); Tichy Ocean Foundation, Zürich (2023); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2023); Busan Biennale (2020); Sursock Museum, Beirut (2019); SculptureCenter, Long Island City (2019); The Mistake Room, Guadalajara (2018); Instituto de Visión, Bogotá (2018); Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing (2017) among others. In 2022, her work was featured in the British Art Show, the largest touring exhibition of contemporary art in the UK, followed by her participation in the Biennale Matter of Art, Prague. She also took part in the performance festival MOVE 2022: Culture club - Corps collectifs at the Centre Pompidou, presenting her piece En Masse in collaboration with choreographer Alethia Antonia and composer Lily Oakes. Two works by the artist, Net-Grid (my dad knows nothing) (2020) and Figured Ground (2020), were acquired by the Tate for their permanent collection in 2022.

Mandy El-Sayegh was interviewed by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen at her studio in London in June 2025.

Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard
Edited and produced by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen

Music via Upright:
Death Rides a Pony by Milan Rastislav Adamik and Simon Exton
When Silence Breaks by Anna Rømer
Bells of Uncertainty by Gavin Linnihan

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond.

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