Fore

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Fore

2020
Paintings
Oil on silkscreened linen with collaged elements
86 5/8 × 55 1/8 in. (220 × 140 cm)
Purchased with funds provided by Dori and Jordan Katz (M.2022.63)
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Rather than determining her compositions before starting to work, Mandy El-Sayegh relies on the interactions between the found ...
Rather than determining her compositions before starting to work, Mandy El-Sayegh relies on the interactions between the found materials she uses, including newspapers, advertisements, and her father’s Arabic calligraphy, to guide the development of each piece. The intermingling of materials, text, and images leaves much of her work open to multiple interpretations, as here where the viewer is invited to look both at and through the represented bodies, teasing out the various relationships embedded within the work’s many layers. The embracing nude couple and the word “FORE,” perhaps short for foreplay, generate an air of sexual intimacy but also ambiguity, as the layering of these elements over far less sensual financial news articles and an advertisement for an alarm system called Cerberus (after the mythical hound of Hades) complicates any initial sense of the painting’s meaning.
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Bibliography

  • Komaroff, Linda, Stephanie Rouinfar, Sandra Williams, and Sarah Mostafa Ahmed. Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023. https://archive.org/details/women-defining-women (accessed January 12, 2024).