Youssef Nabil

Youssef Nabil (b. 1972, Cairo; lives and works in Paris and New York) develops hand-coloured silver prints that draw on the aesthetics of early Technicolor films and classic studio portraiture. His work subverts Orientalist tropes, transforming images into poetic dreamscapes—visions of Egypt not as it is, but as it might have been. Shaped by memory, longing and cultural identity, these dreamlike compositions blur the line between personal and collective histories, offering a nuanced reflection on exile, beauty and belonging.

In 2020–2021, Nabil presented his first retrospective exhibition at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, titled “Once Upon a Dream”.

Youssef Nabil’s work is held in numerous international collections, including: in the United States, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, and the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah; in France, the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the François Pinault Collection, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris; in Switzerland, the UBS Art Collection in Zurich; in the United Kingdom, the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London; in Angola, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation in Luanda; in Greece, the Museum of Photography in Thessaloniki; in Qatar, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha; in the United Arab Emirates, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; and in Mexico, the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City.