Youssef Nabil was born on the 6th of November 1972.[1] He is an Egyptian artist and photographer. Youssef Nabil began his photography career in 1992.
Background
Born in Cairo, Egypt, Nabil started his photography career in 1992, shortly before leaving to New York and Paris to work in prominent photographers' studios. In 1999, Youssef Nabil had his first solo exhibition in Cairo. Through the years he remained a close friend with the Egyptian-Armenian studio portrait photographer Van Leo (Leon Boyadjian, 1921–2001), who encouraged Nabil to leave to the West. In 2003, Youssef Nabil was awarded the Seydou Keita Prize in the Biennial of African Photography in Bamako.
In 2001, while visiting Cairo, British artist Tracey Emin discovered Nabil's work and later nominated him as a future top artist in Harper's article Tomorrow People. Nabil left Egypt in 2003[2] for an artist residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. In 2006, he moved to live and work in New York.
In 2010, Nabil wrote, produced and directed his first film You Never Left,[2] an 8-minute short film with actors Fanny Ardant and Tahar Rahim. It is set in an allegorical place that is a metaphor of a lost Egypt, sketching an intimate and solemn parallel between exile and death. This video in which he reverently and inventively revisits the characteristics of Egyptian cinema’s golden age, with its movie stars and Technicolor film stock, he reconnects with the source and inspiration of his photographic imagery with which it shares the same personal, diaristic quality.
In 2015, Nabil produced his second video, I Saved My Belly Dancer, with actors Salma Hayek and Tahar Rahim, a narration around his fascination with the tradition of belly dancers and the disappearance of the art form that is unique to the Middle East. The 12-minute video also explores shifting perceptions of women in the Arab world and the tensions between the amplified sexualisation of their bodies and the continued repression of women in modern Arab society. I Saved My Belly Dancer is featured in the collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida.[6]
Four monographs have been published on Youssef Nabil's work – Sleep in My Arms (Autograph ABP and Michael Stevenson, 2007), I Won't Let You Die (Hatje Cantz, 2008), Youssef Nabil ( Flammarion, 2013) and Once Upon A Dream ( Marsilio, 2020).
2019 – The 13th International Cairo Biennale, Cairo, Egypt.
2018 – The Shapes of Birds: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa, Newport Art Museum, Rhode Island, U.S.
2018 – BOTH, AND. Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa.
2018 – Beyond Words, 4th Mardin Biennial, Turkey
2018 – Al Musiqa, Cité de la Musique – Philharmonie de Paris, Paris, France.
2017 – Hips Don’t Lie, Centre Pompidou Paris, France
2017 – A Painting Today, Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2016 – Looking at the World Around You, Fundación Banco Santander, Madrid, Spain.
2016 – Hips Don’t Lie, Centre Pompidou Málaga, Spain
2016 – The Blue Hour, Centro Cultural de Santa Cruz, Biennale of the Visual Arts of Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
2016 – Portrait of the Artist as an Alter, FRAC Haute-Normandie, France.
2016 – Dream Light, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, U.S.
2016 – Botticelli Reimagined, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
2015 – The Botticelli Renaissance, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
2015 – Home Ground, Aga Khan Museum of Art, Toronto, Canada.
2015 – The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists. Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C, U.S.
2015 – Islamic Art Now: Contemporary Art of the Middle East. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA, LA, U.S.
2014 – The Divine Comedy, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory Revisited by Contemporary African Artists,
SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, U.S.
2014 – The Divine Comedy, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory Revisited by Contemporary African Artists,
