{"id":3152,"date":"2022-09-09T06:02:51","date_gmt":"2022-09-09T06:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/internationally-acclaimed-photographer-youssef-nabil-unveils-his-beautiful-voyage-show\/"},"modified":"2022-09-09T06:02:51","modified_gmt":"2022-09-09T06:02:51","slug":"internationally-acclaimed-photographer-youssef-nabil-unveils-his-beautiful-voyage-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=3152","title":{"rendered":"Internationally acclaimed photographer\u00a0Youssef Nabil unveils his \u2018Beautiful Voyage\u2019 show\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nDUBAI: The Paris-based Egyptian visual artist Youssef Nabil has a new solo show at The Third Line gallery in Dubai, called \u201cThe Beautiful Voyage,\u201d which contains works from 2016 onwards and runs Sept. 22 until Oct. 28.<\/p>\n
\nThrough his striking photography, Nabil has established himself internationally, with his work being acquired by museums and galleries across the globe \u2014 his portraits of celebrities including Alicia Keys, Robert DeNiro, Sting and many others have proved particularly popular.<\/p>\n
\nSunny Rahbar, co-founder The Third Line \u2014 which has represented Nabil in the region since 2005, explains that Nabil\u2019s photographs are taken in black and white, then hand painted by the artist, giving his work its distinct aesthetic. This, as US cultural journalist Bob Colacello notes in his essay for the show, results in the superimposition of \u201cpainting over photography, the human over the machine, the timeless over the immediate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s actually an old technique,\u201d Rahbar tells Arab News. \u201cHe has a fascination with cinema, and in early cinema they used to hand paint the film. Even though these are photographs (produced) in editions of three or five, or 10, each one is slightly different. They\u2019re unique.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nSince 2010, Nabil has also been working with video as a medium, and the centerpiece of the new show is the titular short film starring Nabil and award-winning actress Charlotte Rampling.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThis body of work is important because it\u2019s quite a shift in his trajectory \u2014 in that he\u2019s really turned the camera on himself,\u201d says Rahbar. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of self-portraits and the new film is a very intimate conversation. I think there\u2019s a maturity in this series.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThough Nabil has never claimed to be blazing a trail for others from the Arab world, as Rahbar points out: \u201cWhen an artist from this part of the world gets recognition on this level, it definitely helps further the cause.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nHere we present some highlights from the show.<\/p>\n
\nThis eight-minute video features a monologue by Rampling which tells Nabil\u2019s own story. In her essay for the exhibition, art scholar and curator Layla S. Diba writes: \u201cThe two protagonists lie in a bathtub in a ghostly bathroom seated far apart, together yet separate. Both figures are archetypes: Rampling the eternal Mother and Nabil the spectral figure of Egyptian lore and son. Rampling reassures the artist that he never truly left his loved ones or his country, that life is a journey, a dream, that his true home is movement and that the dead are never truly lost to us. The words are the artist\u2019s own, the first script he has written and published, and represent a moving summation of the wisdom he has acquired through the years as an outsider in an ever-changing and unsettled world, which resonates deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAmong the 21 prints in the show is this 2021 self-portrait of Nabil asleep under a tree under a moonlit sky (both of which recur throughout his work). He is dreaming, and being visited by three angels. According to Diba, this image is a \u201cslightly altered version\u201d of an 1883 work by French painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, which Nabil was immediately drawn to. \u201cA similar dreamlike quality is frequently encountered in (Nabil\u2019s) oeuvre,\u201d she writes. \u201cNabil clearly identifies with the sleeping figure of the lonely wanderer, now transformed into the contemporary artist and his dreams of glory.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u2018Your Life Was Just A Dream\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n
Youssef Nabil, \u201cYour Life Was Just a Dream,\u201d 2019. (Supplied)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
\nAnother theme of the works on display, Diba notes, is \u201cnostalgia for an Orientalist fantasy of ancient Egypt \u2026 The fantasy of Egypt as a verdant green landscape or a fertile oasis \u2026 is referenced by a number of the photographs in this series although none are set in Egypt.\u201d This 2019 image is one such example, and also shares the sense of loss and longing that permeates so many of Nabil\u2019s images.<\/p>\n
\nThis piece from 2021 encompasses what Diba calls \u201c(Nabil\u2019s) ultimate acceptance of his identity as a nomad wandering the earth.\u201d She also describes the figure in such self-portraits as evoking the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said and the Jewish author Lev Nussenbaum, \u201cwho adopted the persona of a Muslim writer to pen one of the most popular pre-war romance novels \u2018Ali and Nino.\u2019\u201d All three, she notes \u201chave navigated successfully between worlds and produced their greatest works as exiles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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