Mandy El-Sayegh and Carine Harmand in conversation

Autumn Term, sees the return of the Royal Drawing School series of Creative Conversations; online dialogues between artists, curators and writers. Curated by Dr Claudia Tobin, lectures are held Wednesday evenings live on Zoom. 

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This conversation will explore the multi-faceted artistic practice of Mandy El-Sayegh. The speakers will discuss the tension between abstraction and creating meaning in her work as it manifests in the entanglement of painting, drawing, and writing. They will also address El-Sayegh’s video and performative works and how they relate to subjects of violence, the physical body and processes of care.

Mandy El-Sayegh, 'The Amateur and problems with metaphor', Installation view, Sursock Museum, Beirut, 2019. Part of the 8th edition of Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices. Courtesy the artist and Ashkal Alwan.

Mandy El-Sayegh, 'your words will be used against you', Performance, Frieze LIVE, London, 2020. Photo: Deniz Guzel. Courtesy the artist, Lehmann Maupin and Frieze.

Mandy El-Sayegh (b. 1985), lives and works in London. She has a highly process-driven practice rooted in an exploration of material and language. In her paintings, table vitrines, immersive installations, and videos, El-Sayegh creates layered anthologies of found text and images. Set adrift from their original contexts, these fragments become open to multiple readings that are personally, socially or politically determined and undermine the supposed objectivity of language and media. In 2022, she will be featured in The British Art Show, the largest touring exhibition of contemporary art in the UK. Solo exhibitions include: Sursock Museum, Beirut, Lebanon (2019); Bétonsalon, Paris, France (2019); Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK (2019); Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong (2019); The Mistake Room, Guadalajara, Mexico (2018); and Lehmann Maupin, New York, US (2018).  

Carine Harmand is an art curator, currently working as Assistant Curator of International Art at Tate Modern in London. Harmand is a trustee of Mimosa House, London, a space dedicated to platforming women and queer artists and focusing on the fluidity of identity. She is on the advisory board of the Santo Domingo Centre for Excellence in Latin American Research at the British Museum, London. Harmand has worked previously in a curatorial capacity in Cameroon, Mozambique and South Africa, and was co-curator of the exhibition I am Ashurbanipal, King of the World, King of Assyria at the British Museum in 2016. She holds an MA in Archaeology and Curatorial Studies from the School of the Louvre, Paris and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History and Theory from the University of Essex.