Exhibition guide
Since the 1990s, the Franco-Egyptian photographer-videographer Youssef Nabil, born in 1972, has built a body of work with a very strong visual identity to which the Musée d'Orsay has made a decisive contribution. His first visit to France and his discovery of the museum's collections, in 1992, still remain a source of inspiration which has permeated his work for more than thirty years, as evidenced by the self-portrait The Dream (2021), in line with Le Rêve by Puvis de Chavannes. Youssef Nabil's exhibition, which makes him the first artist to invest in the orientalist gallery, is an opportunity to put his works into perspective with those which marked him within this space, which constitutes, with symbolism, the heart of this aesthetic rapprochement.
Visit details
- Dates: From Tuesday May 19, 2026 to Sunday September 13, 2026: Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
- Venue: Musée d'Orsay, Esplanade Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Paris
- Price: De 0 à 16 euros.
- Audience: All audiences
- Source: Event page
About the exhibition
the artist. Odilon Redon. The themes of exile, rebirth and dreams are omnipresent in his work. The penultimate room is devoted to the crossed identities represented by Nabil, on both sides of the Mediterranean borrowing from the symbols of the East and the West in syncretic creations. The black and white silver prints enhanced using an ancient hand coloring technique by Youssef Nabil, evoke the glorious and fantasized Egypt of his childhood - the artist's country of birth - and conjure visual atmospheres in velvety tones. Finally, two videos by the artist are projected in a room echoing the artist's passion for the cinematographic medium.
The back postures of his self-portraits, although faceless, are tinged with melancholy and maintain a scent of mystery. His work, which borrows from the registers of dreams and nostalgia, seeks to escape from purely questions of identity to embody a Mediterranean world without borders, fantasized and idealized. The exhibition follows the chronological journey of an artist of our time in five major stages, intertwined with transhistorical twists and turns. Egypt is, in the eyes of the artist, the setting of a sensual and conscious orientalism, with images which take up its codes: warm tangy colors, bathed in a peaceful atmosphere made of desires and dreams, depicting a free Orient, without prohibition or censorship.
In addition to orientalism, the aesthetic of the refined decors summoning blues and whites united in transparent effects reflect the symbolist influences of The rich collection of 19th century photographs of expeditions to Egypt opens the exhibition with a distinction between artistic production in the Orient and orientalism.
On this historical foundation, the exhibition reveals the productions relating to the artist's youth, then his first meeting with the Musée d'Orsay during his first trip to France in 1992, the third stage of the journey mobilizing tutelary figures for him, such as Pierre Puvis de Chavanne or