Becoming a Vessel: Alexei Mansour on Self, Multiplicity, and Transition
Interviewed by Sarah Trad
1. Can you talk about the development of this exhibition and how the Duncan Grant pieces became involved?
The show came together because two curators [Sharyl Cubero Aguilar and John Anderies] reached out to me after I participated in [William Way’s] yearly juried exhibition that features local artists who are part of the queer community. I submitted to this open call and they asked if I wanted to have a solo show there.
John asked me if I’d be interested in showing these two pieces, which were owned by a friend of the center. I saw the pieces and was immediately taken aback. [Duncan Grant] was producing a long time ago, early twentieth century, and I realized that the pieces being shown had actually been hidden for a really long time. Grant had made a whole body of erotic drawings and no one knew about them until 2020 when they were shown to the public.
2. There are a lot of themes of history running through this exhibition, from Greco-Roman aesthetics to the venue as an important archive center for queer history.
You’re exactly right about the center being this historic institution and great platform in the city for queer people. To be able to show my work that speaks to my own sense of identity, in a historic context, in a historic building amongst a historic artist - it’s just so many layers. We come [to William Way] and we have conversations about our bodies with other people, and we get tested…and there is this notion of the body as a center focal point if you identify as queer, so it feels very fitting for this exhibition.
3. Can you talk about where your interest in antiquity came from?
I grew up in America but my family is Syrian and Lebanese immigrants. I also grew up in the Antiochian Orthodox Church, so this sort of culmination of things inhibited me from fully and openly expressing myself. And sometimes in that environment, you have to live a split multi-life, a double consciousness. In my undergrad, I was doing a lot of self-exploration through art. One of my biggest challenges at the time was being understood through Christian imagery. Byzantine iconography can be cryptic and mystical and I think people were uncomfortable because they couldn’t understand it. At the time I discovered Greek antiquity, I saw a lot of queerness in it and was personally moving away from the Church and discovering new aspects of my identity. I was searching for something I could connect to with this new sense of identity and I realized that this stuff exists in the past. The element of antiquity grounds the pieces, imagery, and especially the subject matter of sexuality with a sense of authority.
The first wall, labeled Reflections on the virtual exhibition is about the separate aspects of the self and the multiplicity of different parts coming together. It’s represented by objects like the Janus vase, which was this Greco-Roman figure who had two faces on either side and symbolized the past, future, and transitions of time. There is the theme of transitions and there are replications of the same body over and over again. In the Duncan Grant pieces, there are multiple bodies that are combined together.
4. Can you discuss the other themes within the exhibition?
Some walls are directed towards this sense of the body and the vessel. A vessel is also a place of transition over time because it’s a container that contains, something, is emptied, and then filled again. It was an easy step towards using vessels as an analogy for this “becoming” and becoming queer. The body is a vessel and when you explore yourself sexually you become a container of somebody else.
The other walls have other themes, centered around this sense of vegetation and life and themes that I grew up with surrounding The Garden of Eden. One thing that you’ll see throughout the show is images of peony flowers. It’s a symbol in my work because there is a symbiotic relationship between peony flowers and ants, where the peony flower’s bud has a layer of nectar encasing it. The layer is hardened so the flower can’t move, and ants find that nectar very sweet and eventually eat it off until the flower can bloom.
I’d been really interested in the imagery of ants prior to this, because there’s a theory of emergence that talks about multiplicities and bodies of living beings that come together unintentionally to create society and culture, basically the unorganized chaos becoming organized. To me, I was very much seeing ants as this analogy for the community.
Listen to Alexei discuss his inspiration on color in painting:
Alexei Mansour (he/him/his) is a Philadelphia-based artist focusing on painting and drawing. His solo exhibition Becoming a Vessel was on view at William Way Center from September 15-October 28, 2022 but is still available to view virtually at this link: