At the Musée d’Orsay, Youssef Nabil’s Egyptian dreams enter into dialogue with Orientalist paintings.
In this review for Les Inrockuptibles, Youssef Nabil’s exhibition De rêver encore at Musée d'Orsay is explored through the relationship between photography, painting, and memory. The article reflects on Nabil’s signature practice of hand-coloring black-and-white photographs, creating images suspended between reality and fantasy, where personal memories of Egypt merge with the visual languages of Orientalism and Symbolism.
The article emphasizes how the exhibition reveals the lasting influence of the Musée d’Orsay collection on Nabil’s artistic imagination, particularly following his formative visit to the museum in 1992. Through dialogues with works by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Odilon Redon, the presentation examines recurring themes of exile, spirituality, dreams, and reincarnation, while positioning Nabil’s photographs as reinterpretations rather than reproductions of Orientalist imagery.
The final galleries, dedicated to Nabil’s films featuring Marina Abramović, Salma Hayek, and Tahar Rahim, further expand the exhibition’s cinematic and dreamlike atmosphere. Throughout the piece, Nabil’s practice is presented as an intimate negotiation between childhood memory, fantasy, and cultural identity, where photography becomes a space for both nostalgia and reinvention.
