Youssef Nabil at the Musée d'Orsay
MUSÉE D’ORSAY
From May 19 to September 13, 2026
To dream again
Black and white photographs hand-enhanced, color by color, using an old silver halide colorization technique. In a world saturated with digital filters, Youssef Nabil's gesture stands out – and fascinates. These velvety tones, these luminous blues and whites, these golden flesh tones seem to emerge from a vanished Mediterranean cinema, from a glorious and fantasized Egypt that perhaps never existed except in the artist's dreams.
A Franco-Egyptian born in 1972, Youssef Nabil has been building since the 1990s a body of work with an immediately recognizable visual identity – self-portraits from behind, melancholic silhouettes, a sensual and boundless Orient.
The Musée d'Orsay exhibition also tells another story: that of a 20-year-old from Cairo who discovered the museum in 1992 and left transformed. Thirty years later, Orsay opened its Orientalist gallery to him – he became the first artist to exhibit there. A return, a recognition, a circle completed. The five-section exhibition blends his works with the collections that inspired him – Puvis de Chavannes, Odilon Redon – and concludes with two videos that extend his passion for cinema.
An exhibition that resembles his work: gentle, captivating, and hard to forget.
MUSÉE D’ORSAY
From May 19 to September 13, 2026
Esplanade Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, 75007
Metro Solférino (Line 12)
Tue. to Sun. 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thu. until 9:45 PM
Closed on Mondays
Price: €16 - Reduced price: €13 - Free for under 26s
