Mandy El-Sayegh's exhibition "For Theresa" at Space K Seoul in Seoul runs from March 19 to June 21, 2026, bringing together recent and new painting series with immersive installation and scenographic staging. The show features her signature Net-Grid canvases and new Grand Collection of World Art tableaux, incorporating banknotes, newspaper clippings, classical paintings, maps, and medical diagrams. The title references the late Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, whose book Dictée serves as a model for exploring fractured language, gendered memory, and diasporic historical consciousness. The exhibition is arranged into four sections, with walls plastered with newspapers that recall traditional Korean paper doors, creating a dense field where disparate registers coexist without reconciliation.
The exhibition matters because it extends Cha's investment in rupture and dispersal into a visual domain, engaging with colonial and migrant histories in Korea through El-Sayegh's research. By incorporating a secondhand book on "world art" featuring Ingres's Grande Odalisque, the show critiques Eurocentric perspectives and the voyeuristic male gaze, while layering Korean script, advertising images, and historical newspapers. This work represents a significant contemporary dialogue between a London-based Palestinian artist and a foundational Korean American artist, addressing themes of diaspora, gendered memory, and the instability of images in a globalized world.