Figure 1.80 (2023)

Mandy El-Sayegh, along with seven other leading international artists, were asked to create a print to celebrate the ICA's 75th anniversary. A third of the profits from the sale of each print will be benefit the ICA's programme.

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El-Sayegh collages disparate fragments of information together, interrogating the ways that meaning might emerge from the relationship between these different source materials. Her works often feature newsprint, advertisements, aerial maps, anatomy books and her father's calligraphy, alongside hand-painted elements and non-traditional materials such as latex, allowing her to move between material, corporeal and linguistic frameworks. ⁠

In Figure 1.80 (2023) text reading GØUCC has been applied in gold foil. This is the call sign for El-Sayegh’s father, a name he has adopted in his amateur radio practice throughout his life. A Palestinian calligrapher, her father belongs to a history that is methodically erased. Here, the artist draws on what she has termed in other works as ‘editorial aliases’, questioning how to protect one’s identity through language when one is not allowed symbolic space.

Contrasting this alias with the brand name Prada, El-Sayegh comments on how brand association and bootlegging become methods of stealing power, while cultural histories and luxury items become interchangeable goods.