Dispersal: An Exhibition That Makes Sense of Global Information Saturation

Description

As part of a generation coming of age at the turn of the 21st century, El-Sayegh’s artistic sensibility is informed by the fractured and diffused nature of acquiring knowledge and personal perspective amidst our globalised, information-saturated era. Her Net-Grid studies included in the exhibition visually recreate the process by which one’s psyche seeks, traps, retains, and associates information. The process by which our sensory receptors retain and translate environments, experiences, education, news, and entertainment into the internalised personal network of thought, memory, and dreams is made evident in the hazy, yet formally rigorous grid of these paintings.

The attention paid to the conceptual or metaphorical properties of her materials is again evident in the Piece Paintings that incorporate figurative imagery in surrealistic juxtapositions. These are positioned in El-Sayegh’s room sized installation that is created from a grid of the South China Morning Post applied directly to the gallery’s walls. For the artist, the use of a local newspaper, published in English, further illuminates the frameworks of nationality, culture, society, and commerce that permeate our understanding of the world and our place within it. Standing amidst her installation of news and layered imagery, El-Sayegh provides a perfect encapsulation of the globalised network experience that viewers engage with every day.