From August 24, 2025, to January 11, 2026, Now Showing: Youssef Nabil’s I Saved My Belly Dancer will be on view at the Resnick Pavilion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
Designed to evoke the mid-century cinema in which the films that inspired Youssef Nabil’s art were originally shown, this exhibition showcases the artist’s 2015 video I Saved My Belly Dancer, a recent LACMA acquisition. It also features 11 related photographs that parallel the filmic storyline, along with contemporaneous Egyptian film posters.
Like much of Nabil’s work, the subject matter is subtly autobiographical and reflects his longing for the past—one he experienced vicariously through the old movies he watched obsessively on television while growing up in Cairo. Tahar Rahim performs as the artist’s alter ego, and the belly dancer is played by Salma Hayek. The video and photographs possess a dreamlike, otherworldly quality, further enhanced by the unearthly intensity and tonality of the color palette, which the artist hand-painted on silver gelatin prints and colorized frame by frame with concentrated, supersaturated hues.
