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I Saved My Belly Dancer #XII, 2015 Photography: Youssef Nabil<\/p>\n
His films and photographs frequently inhabit liminal spaces \u2013 characters suspended between life and death, memory and afterlife. This sensibility continues in his latest video work, The Room, featuring the \u201cgrandmother of performance art\u201d Marina Abramovi\u0107. \u201cI see life as a dream, and Marina says, \u2018Wake up, Youssef. It is time to die,\u2019\u201d he explains. This line encapsulates a central paradox in Nabil\u2019s philosophy \u2013 existence itself may be the dream, fleeting and intangible. \u201cFor me, we are not just bodies; we are also souls. I choose to believe that.\u201d This belief infuses his work with spirituality \u2013 one that transcends geography, religion and time.<\/p>\n
Among the constants in Nabil\u2019s life is his enduring friendship with Abramovi\u0107 \u2013 a relationship that began by chance in Cairo and evolved into a profound artistic and personal bond. \u201cWe became friends immediately,\u201d he remembers how they met at a cafe 26 years ago. Reflecting on their artistic collaboration, he explains, \u201cMarina always saw the autobiographical side of my work. She emailed me after watching my video, The Beautiful Voyage, with Charlotte Rampling. It was very moving for me to read her opinion about it and how much the project touched her heart. So I said, \u2018Maybe we should do the next video together!\u2019 and she replied, \u2018I’ll do anything with you. Let\u2019s just do it.\u2019 She’s really my sister, and from day one, she has been supporting my work.\u201d He continues, \u201cYou very rarely meet people like that \u2013 artists who actually go out of their way to support other artists and be part of their story.\u201d Their shared work invites viewers to feel, however briefly, the intimacy of their connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I Saved My Belly Dancer #XII, 2015 Photography: Youssef Nabil His films and photographs frequently inhabit liminal spaces…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,98754,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-677530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-culture","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}