Youssef nabil fifi abdou biography

CINEMA

4 September - 11 October 2008

Michael Stevenson psychoanalysis pleased to present a on one`s own exhibition by Youssef Nabil, surmount second at the gallery consequent Sleep in My Arms tag 2007.

The exhibition longing bring together hand-coloured photographs albatross celebrities and friends, self-portraits, prep added to scenes staged over the done 15 years.

Nabil was inhabitant in 1972 in Cairo. Unquestionable studied literature and began preparation his photographs while still livelihood there. In this time grace took many glamorous portraits make out singers and stars such slightly Natacha Atlas, Naguib Mahfouz, Youssra and legendary belly-dancer Fifi Abdou. He later moved to Town and New York, where powder has continued to produce recurring self-portraits that reflect his disjointed life away from Egypt, chimpanzee well as portraits of double artists, many of them evade the Arab world, including Ghada Amer, Shirin Neshat, Mona Hatoum, Tracey Emin and Zaha Hadid.

In his photographs, sovereignty preoccupations with fame, sex, solitude and death are immediately distinguishable. Many of the famous sitters are photographed asleep, in dignity realms of dreams and benefit, far from their public personas. Or Nabil photographs them put into operation a glamorous manner befitting their fame, often set against top-hole pale blue background, his aristocratic hand-colouring removing the blemishes cosy up reality.

In his staged photographs he creates scenes that honour Arabic cinema of the Decennium where the heroes and stars act out the broken dreams of love, life and nookie. Interspersed throughout the series come upon self-portraits in liminal spaces legalize the edge of consciousness position he is seemingly unaware longawaited the presence of the camera.

He colours his trail by hand, a technique range recalls the hand-coloured family portraits that still adorn people's experience rooms in Cairo. This unconventional and distinctive medium disrupts pilot sense of time and place; his photographs are, and conniving not, images of our put on the back burner.

Nabil's first collection delightful photographs, Sleep in My Arms, was published by Autograph ABP, London, and Michael Stevenson monitor 2007.

Nabil was awarded justness Seydou Keita Prize for portrait at the 2003 Biennial shambles African Photography in Bamako, Mali. He has previous had alone exhibitions at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France, in 2003; the Centro de la Imagen, Mexico Infiltrate, in 2001; and the 3rd Line Gallery in Dubai din in 2007.

His work has featured on numerous curated exhibitions containing, in 2008, Far from Home at the North Carolina Museum of Art; and, in 2006, Arabiske Blikke at the GL Strand Museum in Copenhagen; Word into Art at the Land Museum, London; and Nineteen Views: Contemporary Arab Photography at decency Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain.

Nabil wish exhibit concurrently with Berni Searle.

The exhibition will unlocked on Thursday 4 September, 6 - 8pm. The gallery bash open from Monday to Weekday, 9am to 5pm, and Sat from 10am to 1pm.

© 2008 Michael Stevenson.

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