The show marks the London-based artist’s inaugural solo exhibition at Lawrie Shabibi
Curated by award-winning writer Sara Raza, London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh’s first solo exhibition at Dubai’s Lawrie Shabibi, A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, showcases her innovative approach to visual storytelling. On view until 4 April, the show comprises a combination of painting, installation, video, sound and performance.
Inspired by the rebellious spirit of punk’s DIY visual culture, the artist challenges norms, freeing images and text from centralised commodification structures, exploring a fusion of various actions, creating an immersive audio-visual experience that weaves together ancestral, familial, and collective visual data from diverse sources such as ephemera, textiles, literature, newspapers, and printed materials.
The gallery space is transformed with layered painted surfaces, using sheets from international newspapers of different shades. The white walls are covered in stretched canvases and unfinished paintings, filled with intricate pattern-work, symbolic references and collages.
The showcase – in collaboration with sound artist Sami El-Enany and movement artist Chelsea Gordon – nods to ancient and modern poetry, while the title of the exhibition is from a line in Gertrude Stein’s Sacred Emily (1913), which reflects on the practices of daily life, through the repetition of words and the reclamation of language, actions, events, and objects.
El-Sayegh, who is British and Malaysian, of Palestinian origin, is known for her evocative exploration of material and language. Her work is held in major institutional collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami; Start Museum, Shanghai; and Tate, UK.
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose runs 23 February until 4 April 2024 at Lawrie Shabibi.
Lead image: Installation view, Mandy El-Sayegh: ‘A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’, curated by Sara Raza, 22 February – 4 April 2024, Dubai. Photo by Ismail Noor of Seeing Things. Courtesy of the artist and Lawrie Shabibi
