‘I like to go clubbing to break the isolation of the studio’

Mandy El-Sayegh is a British-Malaysian-Palestinian artist born in Selangor, Malaysia, and now based in south London. She received an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art. In 2017 she was shortlisted for the Max Mara art prize for women. Her work often features newspaper and magazine clippings and other documents layered over floors, ceilings and walls to create immersive installations. Her largest exhibition to date opened at Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam earlier this month, and El-Sayegh has just launched a mural commission at the Showroom in west London. 

Bullyache: Who Hurt You? at the Southbank Centre, London SE1

I went to a show by the artist duo Bullyache a couple of weeks ago and was intrigued to see this new genre-bending type of performance that I didn’t really understand, but which was very exciting. It’s a maximalist collage blending dance culture, queerness and performance. It seemed to be about the experience of working in theatre and dance, and about the lack of funds. Everything is on the verge of collapse. The singing breaks down, they break the fourth wall. Every structure is broken down and reformed. It was a high-octane experience.

Why Theory

I play lots of podcasts when I’m working and I’ve been listening to this one, co-hosted by philosopher Todd McGowan, since it started. It uses continental philosophy and psychoanalysis to examine cultural phenomena that are topical and current. I liked their recent episodes on the gaze and the voice, and they did a whole episode in response to the New York Times top 100 films list, where they drew their own top 100. It made me want to watch 13 Going on 30 with Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner – not normally a film I’d seek out but it was interesting to view it through their framework.

4.48 Psychosis at the Royal Court, London SW1

Earlier this year I went to see the revival of this Sarah Kane play. Three actors represent different parts of the protagonist’s psyche and a psychiatrist, and they’re having painful conversations with each other. The production did really interesting things with mirrors that distort your perception and speak to the experience of psychosis. I talk a lot about my own psychosis in 2020 and how I couldn’t really access my normal language faculties. This show helped me see how the grammar of thought breaks down in dialogue, in vision. And it captures a universal feeling of dislocation and alienation.

Unfold at Fold, London E16

I’m alone in my studio a lot, so I like to go out clubbing to break up that isolation. My partner and I and another couple go out as a polycule. We do a lot of research to find a good night and then stick to it. Unfold is a day rave at Fold in Canning Town, midday to midnight every other Sunday, and it blends different generations. It’s really dark, lots of lasers, and the sound system is amazing. It’s good to feel that embodied experience and bring it back into the studio.

Anatomy of a Fall (dir Justine Triet, 2023)

This is a legal drama that follows a death in a family home in the Alps, examining truth, perception and the testimony-giver in the legal system. The protagonist is a novelist played with conviction by Sandra Hüller. Her husband – the one who dies – is also a writer, so there are plenty of themes I can relate to with regard to artist-couple dynamics. The cinematography is minimal yet striking – reminiscent for me of the 1973 film Don’t Look Now. The way it implicates you as a viewer psychologically and emotionally is beautifully complex and leaves a residue.

Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme: Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom at Nottingham Contemporary

I’ve always liked the work of these two Palestinian artists. They talk about resistance movements through the medium of film a lot about sound as a medium of resistance when you can’t really speak your truth or be your truth. They take archival footage and splice it up with gatherings of people from different moments in time. It might be surveillance footage of people coming through checkpoints, but it’s done in such a beautiful way that you are hypnotised for the duration.

Photograph by DMark Media / Alamy Stock Photo