”I love these boring things, but they’re so precious to me as a kid.” Inside her studio, artist Mandy El-Sayegh explores how painting can hold complex and often difficult subject matter within a space of intuition and flow, “a child-like state.”
”I try to get into a warm place because I’m dealing with quite heavy subject matter.” Iridescent colours – inspired by the shifting tones of opal – frequently overlay more visceral imagery: ”There’s always this kind of mermaid colours that go on top of all the gore,” she says, continuing: “If anyone talks about my colours, there’s not really a colour. It’s a density. I’m a terrible colourist. Well, I’m not even one at all.”
In the studio, we meet a wide range of visual sources, including old Vogue magazines, advertising, tabloid headlines, and packaging of everyday objects. Signs and calligraphy can be found amongst graphic imagery: ”You’re trying to find the most efficient way of using language and getting attention,” she explains: ”So this economy of attention and what is recognisable in an image, in a field, is really interesting to me.”
Besides creating her intricate paintings in the studio, it also functions as a living archive, or “library”, of materials where objects are collected and organised according to an intuitive system. Recurring themes include the body, hypervisibility, and materiality: ”You know how a kid loves bubble wrap, and they’ll throw away the present? It’s still at that stage.” Next to a shelf with slingshots, a collection of the book series ‘Goosebumps’ can be found: ”The colour on the old books is fucking incredible. I think it’s better than Warhol.”
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:
In The Sun by Brian Just
The Sirens Rock by Joseph Francis Whitney/She Rocola
Holidays Dream by Alice Guerlot-Kourouklis
On The Move by Elisabeth Skornik/Guy Skornik
Art and Craft by Bernard Becker/Armand Boileau
Energy Storage by Nicolas Mizrachi/Jean-Francois Morin
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026.
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