The Showroom Mural Commission 2025–26: Mandy El-Sayegh
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For The Showroom’s Mural Commission 2025-26 artist Mandy El-Sayegh will use cut-up methodology, layering materials with poetic fragments to explore the textures of solidarity movements. Assembling scraps of forgotten histories, the artist questions whether aesthetics can be used as a bridge for communication. Key to her investigation is the question: how can aesthetic freedom exist without political freedom? And who has the right to abstraction?
Drawing on a wide range of sources, El-Sayegh will incorporate fragments from personal and collective histories. The Showroom’s location, situated off the Edgware Road close to Church Street Market, has personal significance to the artist, who partially grew up and spent her young adulthood in the area. Working with communities based in the neighbourhood, the artist has collected slogans, imagery and poetry to be re-assembled as elements in the mural. This process of assemblage spans the artist’s practice, where shreds of information with no immediate association are transformed into a coherent, if disjunctive, whole.
A soundscape, which can be heard by passers-by, will utilise the artist’s cut-up methodology to further metabolise poetic imaginaries. Collected from a vast archive, the sonic fragments are like organs, connecting diverse struggles, political ideologies and emotions to wider solidarity networks, or bodies.
About the artist
Mandy El-Sayegh is an artist based in London whose practice is rooted in assemblage. Executed in a wide range of media – including paintings, sculpture, and installation, as well as performance, sound, and video – her works investigate the formation and break-down of systems of order, be they bodily, linguistic, or political.
Recent presentations of her work include Otra Orilla / Another Shore, The Gateway Exhibition, Abu Dhabi (2024-25); Art Basel Parcours, Basel (2024); Enfleshing Overbeck- Gesellschaft – Kunstverein Lübeck (2023); MOVE 2022: Culture club — Corps collectifs at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2022); the Biennale Matter of Art, Prague, (2022); and the travelling exhibition British Art Show 9 (2021–22). Her monograph The Makeshift Body was published in 2023 by Black Dog Press. El-Sayegh’s work is in public and private collections, including LACMA, Los Angeles; Tate, London; and Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah.
Collaborators
Middle Eastern Women & Society Organisation (MEWSO) based in the Church Street Neighbourhood Centre NW8: Hasnaa Fathi, Iman Morsy, Karima Nasr, Maha Mihiedeen, Marie Helena, Mayada Alsayed Issa, Nabila Bouali, Rema, and those who wish to remain anonymous.
About the Mural Commission
The Showroom Mural Commission is a unique opportunity for artists to activate the building’s emblematic facade. Once a year, an international artist works in collaboration with members of communities around the Church Street Ward to create artwork for the mural, complemented by public programming that includes a series of community-engaging events and workshops. Our approach is unique in how we foster strong, long-term relationships and consider everyone involved as collaborators. Trust and mindful consideration of the project’s impact are central to our way of working. Some groups and individuals are starting to participate in projects within our broader programme, and in some cases are taking on a more proactive role within artistic productions. Our programme emphasises collaborative and process-driven approaches to production, encompassing artwork, exhibitions, events, discussions, publications, knowledge sharing, and relationships. We engage with artists and practitioners, including those who are new to the London art scene and international artists. Additionally, we work closely with groups and individuals in our local community who we bring together to work in partnership with artists on specific projects and commissions that contribute to the programme. Public events and workshops form part of these commissions, alongside a programme of publishing, research and events including discussions, screenings, panels, book launches and performances.