Description

Youssef Nabil. Once upon a dream, published by Marsilio, is composed of pictures made with the traditional Egyptian technique widely used for family portraits and movie posters that populated the streets of Cairo. Subsequently Youssef Nabil painted the photographs, which restore the suggestion of a legendary Egypt between symbolism and abstraction.

The search for identity finds, the ideological, social and political concerns of the 21st century and the melancholy of a distant past. These are the subjects that Nabil prefers in his artistic research.

The volume gives an account of the artist’s career through thematic sections that reproduce his early works up to his most recent ones. The photographs are accompanied by texts by the curators and an essay by the scholar of Islamic art of the LACMA Museum of Los Angeles Linda Komaroff.

Also presented is an unpublished conversation between the artist and André Aciman, the Egyptian-born American writer and author of the celebrated novel Call Me By Your Name.