Mandy El-Sayegh
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
In collaboration with sound artist Sami El-Enany and movement artist Chelsea Gordon
Curated by Sara Raza
Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Dubai
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a portal into artist Mandy El-Sayegh’s stream of consciousness, revealing a labyrinth of multiple and overlapping truths. Composed of fractured and repeated actions culminating in an alternative visual and sonic encyclopaedic flow, the exhibition unites ancestral, familial, and collective visual data sourced from ephemera, textiles, literature, newspapers, and other printed materials. These elements are overlaid and camouflaged within her paintings, sound, performance, and wall installations to create poetic codes of resistance that operate in plain sight. El-Sayegh’s methodology is akin to a bricoleur as she engages in the studio art of bricolage—using existing materials and connecting seemingly disparate bodies of visual cultural knowledge to reassemble new meaning.
As part of the exhibition, El-Enany created a quadrophonic sound installation titled نافورة (Nafoura), meaning ‘fountain’. His work references fountains dyed blood-red in public squares in global liberation movements, while also alluding to the endlessly flowing quality of the work.
Using the principles of a Shepard tone – a superposition of frequencies that create the illusion of an infinitely unfolding pitch, نافورة situates the listener in an ever changing sonic geometry where moments of consonance depart as soon as they arrive.
Investigating ideas of noise and turbulence, نافورة (Nafoura) explores military drone soundscapes and their effect on people's everyday lives. Sonic material is derived from El-Enany's research into humanitarian law, first-hand field recordings from the siege of Gaza, personal experience, sound analysis and dialogue. The piece asks what is the effect of the acousmatics of terror? نافورة (Nafoura) is a sonic action, a fountain dyed red with blood, and much like a fountain, acts as a place to come together, to consider our social relationships, to look inward at our complicity in the devastation of the world.
El-Enany also worked with El-Sayegh to develop the sound for a performance work presented at the
gallery, co-created with movement artist Chelsea Gordon. The performance draws on a range of sources,
including diverse forms of prayer rituals which encompass repetition of chants and motion, and engender
trance-like states. Exploring new possibilities for presenting sound and performance, this multi-layered work, like El-Sayegh’s paintings, is infused with complex data and entanglements, capturing various emotions and responses through its layering of audio, movement and kaleidoscopic projections.
El-Enany's work seeks to disrupt supremacist paradigms and hierarchies of knowledge production by delving into global tuning systems, mathematics and metaphysics.
Mandy El-Sayegh
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
In collaboration with sound artist Sami El-Enany and movement artist Chelsea Gordon
Curated by Sara Raza
Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Dubai
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a portal into artist Mandy El-Sayegh’s stream of consciousness, revealing a labyrinth of multiple and overlapping truths. Composed of fractured and repeated actions culminating in an alternative visual and sonic encyclopaedic flow, the exhibition unites ancestral, familial, and collective visual data sourced from ephemera, textiles, literature, newspapers, and other printed materials. These elements are overlaid and camouflaged within her paintings, sound, performance, and wall installations to create poetic codes of resistance that operate in plain sight. El-Sayegh’s methodology is akin to a bricoleur as she engages in the studio art of bricolage—using existing materials and connecting seemingly disparate bodies of visual cultural knowledge to reassemble new meaning.
As part of the exhibition, El-Enany created a quadrophonic sound installation titled نافورة (Nafoura), meaning ‘fountain’. His work references fountains dyed blood-red in public squares in global liberation movements, while also alluding to the endlessly flowing quality of the work.
Using the principles of a Shepard tone – a superposition of frequencies that create the illusion of an infinitely unfolding pitch, نافورة situates the listener in an ever changing sonic geometry where moments of consonance depart as soon as they arrive.
Investigating ideas of noise and turbulence, نافورة (Nafoura) explores military drone soundscapes and their effect on people's everyday lives. Sonic material is derived from El-Enany's research into humanitarian law, first-hand field recordings from the siege of Gaza, personal experience, sound analysis and dialogue. The piece asks what is the effect of the acousmatics of terror? نافورة (Nafoura) is a sonic action, a fountain dyed red with blood, and much like a fountain, acts as a place to come together, to consider our social relationships, to look inward at our complicity in the devastation of the world.
El-Enany also worked with El-Sayegh to develop the sound for a performance work presented at the
gallery, co-created with movement artist Chelsea Gordon. The performance draws on a range of sources,
including diverse forms of prayer rituals which encompass repetition of chants and motion, and engender
trance-like states. Exploring new possibilities for presenting sound and performance, this multi-layered work, like El-Sayegh’s paintings, is infused with complex data and entanglements, capturing various emotions and responses through its layering of audio, movement and kaleidoscopic projections.
El-Enany's work seeks to disrupt supremacist paradigms and hierarchies of knowledge production by delving into global tuning systems, mathematics and metaphysics.