Self Portrait Vincennes

Details

Youssef Nabil (Egyptian, b. 1972)
Self Portrait Vincennes
hand-painted silver gelatin print
29 x 45in. (75 x 115cm.)
Executed in 2003, this work is number three from an edition of three
edition of three.

Literature

Octavio Zaya, Youssef Nabil, Ghada Amer, Faten Hamama and Shirin Neshat, YOUSSEF NABIL: I won't let you die, Ostfildern, 2008 (illustrated in colour p. 239)

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Youssef Nabil's self portraits are executed in muted tones of paint complimenting a nuanced approach to light and shadow. Each tightly cropped and guarded composition contains palpable pangs of longing and displacement and a heavy sense of yearning. Undercurrents of dreaming and death are prominent: Self Portrait, Vincennes, 2003 shows a lifeless body stretched out under the green foliage of the Parisian woods, as if sleeping, or lying devoid of life.

Beautiful, conflicting and at times unsettling, Nabil's self-portraits offer an in-depth narrative with the intertwining of the eternal with quasi interchangeable states of death and slumber. While his
previous work has been heavily influenced by the photo-novellas which once accompanied the classic cinema, his self-portraits seem to more wholly embrace the genre.

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