In Wasserkirche, El-Sayegh presents the immersive installation Enfleshing, first presented in St. Petri Church, Lübeck, Germany as part of her exhibition for Overbeck-Gesellschaft Kunstverein earlier this year. El-Sayegh has ‘reskinned’ the church, installing layers of muslin, latex and paint on the floor alongside draped, hanging works which evoke vellum, the calf-skin parchment onto which manuscripts were written in the medieval period. The centrepiece of Enfleshing is the video and sound work Superimposition (2023), which once again uses a layering of sound and imagery collected by El-Sayegh from a vast range of sources.

Visuals include processes and objects in the artist’s studio taken with a phone in the course of creating works; landscapes; as well as archival material such as a map of occupied Palestine and footage of victims of nuclear bombing. There are clear references to historical violence in the material, but also a focus on painterly techniques, which combine to express the artist’s long-running interest in how artistic processes, specifically the use of layering and transparency, can be used to subtly question inherited power structures.

The title Enfleshing, particularly within this religious setting, holds connotations of the spirit-made-flesh. This title points to the centrality of the body, in literal and symbolic forms, running through El-Sayegh’s work. This emphasis on the body once again returns to the works of Tichý, with the painted torsos of performers within El- Sayegh’s film work uncannily echoing the glimpsed forms of his unknowing subjects