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.
