Read Next: Nabil Nahas to Represent Lebanon at 2026 Venice Biennale

Follow Us

Alerts & Newsletters

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services.

Artforum is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2025 Artforum Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

MANDY EL-SAYEGH

By Mandy El-Sayegh

Share

Photo: Abtin Eshraghi

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.

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.
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.
3M 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.
WINAMP AUDIO VISUALIZER

The original media players from the aughts have a hypnotic simplicity. They connect sound to endless fluid visuals, including fractals, which can induce anything from passive ecstasy to tripped-out nausea. There’s an aspect of the visualizer in a sound structure called a Shepard tone, which is like an ascent or descent that never resolves. Composer Sami El-Enany used this in our recent collaboration in Dubai, with drone frequencies. That resonance and ambiguous state are things that I like to approach in the work I make.
HELL MONEY (AKA JOSS PAPER)

Hell money, also known as joss paper, is printed with replica stacks of paper currency. It is burnt for the dead in service of ancestral worship and for the clearing of spiritual debts. A more traditional and minimalist version of hell money features a gold square column printed on bamboo paper. I like that this material allows for different approaches to death. Symbolically, it holds space for the many places where death rites are taken away, especially within human rights frameworks. As a material entity, hell money is perfect for collage and for observing disintegration in the printing processes. It serves as an interesting metaphor for the alchemical aspect of commodity and painting, and inspired my recent “Burning Square” series. I like the fire, ashes, and ritualism of it all.
RAW ETHIOPIAN WET-SPECIMEN OPALS

Not to be confused with the very expensive opals in the film Uncut Gems (2019), these ethically sourced stones need to be kept in water, otherwise, they crack and craze. They’re contingent on environment and can grow mold, so they must be attended to. I have a collection in my studio bathroom. Their colors change with light and perspective. As a painter, I find them a beautiful resource to gaze upon, and they come alive at night. When I’m blocked, I’ll get the Dremel out and file down parts of the mud matrix. It’s laborious but satisfying. Never static, the forms and hues are otherworldly and complex, reminiscent of the iridescence of fascia, fish scales and oil slicks—anything that bends light in interesting ways. Whenever you think you understand what you are looking at, it evades you—like the possibility of fully possessing anything beautiful.
NEILL BLOMKAMP, DISTRICT 9 (2009)

Thissci-fi body horror, set in Johannesburg, is about the forced subjugation of extraterrestrials on Earth. The film is a one-hit wonder for the director, which makes it even more of a force for me. Set in the city of a former apartheid state, it’s a powerful allegory for the events unfolding in Gaza. Owing to its crudenss, I find this film more vital than art-house work like The Zone of Interest (2023). B-rate body horror possesses a type of earnestness in its excess, speaking to the more visceral register of the human drive rather than to the orchestration of a beautiful frame.
STUDIO SCENT COLLECTION

I’m scent-promiscuous and need a lot of new sensory experiences, so I have a range of different perfumes. When I get ready for a studio session, I go through a mini regression, which can be instigated by a playlist or scent from the past. Those from a certain era will remember the green Impulse Lemon & Freesiabody spray: It’s very secondary-school-girls’-locker-room awkward-trauma nostalgia for me. An elevated scent that I love at the moment is Ex Nihilo’s Hedonist. I don’t even know what its notes are; the more it evades description, the more I’m into it. When I’m treating myself, I burn a Malin+Goetz Leather candle. I read in a supplement somewhere that galleries burn it to effect an atmosphere of stealth wealth for closing a sale.
“THE WHITE LOTION”

Sounds vague and ominous because it is. I have different formulas for this translucent white emulsion that I make for veiling a painting, depending on the substrate. I use this lotion to unify a work’s surface while preserving the fissures beneath. You can also apply this to bodies to turn them into projection screens. There are certain images in film that fix themselves in your imagination. There’s the chalky face of E.T. in the cryochamber, when Elliott thought his alien friend was dead; the lady in the radiator from David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977); or the faces in Lynch’s short film The Grandmother (1969). When latex is fluid, it is vivid white; but as it dries and degrades, it becomes a more organic color. There’s something about the brutality of a type of suspension. In serial killer Dennis Nilsen’s prison audio journal, he describes how serene the deathly complexions of his victims seemed. Texture and opacity can convey so much; the sublime and terror are intrinsic to each other.
EDWARD KIENHOLZ, THE STATE HOSPITAL, 1966

I’m drawn to the image of the doppelgänger in this sculpture. They say if you meet your double, one of you will die. I’m always seeing mine; sometimes we collaborate. I’m top bunk.

Artforum Inbox

Register to receive our full menu of newsletters—From the Archive, Must See, Video, In Print, Dispatch, and ArtforumEDU—as well as special offers from Artforum.

Mandy El-Sayegh shares her Top Ten — Wael Shawky, Drama 1882, 2024, 4K video, color, sound, 45 minutes.

September 2024

VOL. 63, NO. 1

Most Read

Cover of American Pop Art: 106 Forms of Love and Despair (Moderna Museet, 1964).

Exterior view of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

DOGE, National Gallery of Art Representatives Meet to Discuss Museum’s Legal Status

Most Popular

1.

Judge Rules Blake Lively's Emotional Distress Claims Against Justin Baldoni Are Officially Dead

2.

Walton Goggins Tearfully Explains Why He Unfollowed Aimee Lou Wood on Instagram

3.

Elon Musk’s Reign of Corruption Chronicled in Elizabeth Warren Report

4.

Samuel L. Jackson Didn't Understand Kendrick Lamar's Halftime Show Until Dress Rehearsal

You may also like

Cynthia Erivo Belts ‘Sometimes All You Need Is a Song’ to Open Tony Awards

Cynthia Erivo Belts ‘Sometimes All You Need Is a Song’ to Open Tony Awards

Warner Bros. Discovery to Split Into Two Companies

Warner Bros. Discovery to Split Into Two Companies

Billie Joe Armstrong Shares Message of Solidarity Amid L.A. Protests

Billie Joe Armstrong Shares Message of Solidarity Amid L.A. Protests

Jesse Williams’ X Account Seemingly Hacked

Jesse Williams’ X Account Seemingly Hacked

Artforum is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2025 Artforum Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

ad