YOUSSEF NABIL

In conversation with Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat: When was the first time you felt the urge to become an artist?

Youssef Nabil: I think the desire to be an artist came from my childhood, and from watching old Egyptian movies on TV. I think I was about four or five years old when I really understood cinema, that people were acting in movies. The idea that someone is telling a story through a movie fascinated me—that these people are playing a kind of game to tell us a story, but nothing in this story is real, no one is actually related to anyone else, and if they die in the story they don't really die in real life. On another level, I was fascinated by actors being immortalized through art, that you could watch actors fifty years after they died and still be in love with them. I always knew I wanted to work with images—moving or still. Images affected me strongly even then. I think I understood early on how powerful an image could be.

S.N: That is very interesting because, now that you say that, it occurs to me that your portraits are very cinematic … They have a kind of obsession with the notion of stardom and the glamour of cinema. Also, aside from cinema, your photographs are of course reminiscent of old-fashioned photography in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt. Were you inspired by this?

Y.N: Yes, first it was old cinema in Egypt—Technicolor movies—then, later on, hand-painted movie posters and hand-colored black-and-white family portraits influenced me. They were all over, lining Cairo's streets in the seventies and eighties. I really liked the idea of working by hand on images. I used to draw and paint a lot, always portraits; then, when I started making photographs, I thought of mixing them with my painting and felt that I wanted to keep this technique in my work. So I looked for the old colorists, the ones who used to color portraits for portrait studios in Cairo and Alexandria, and this is how I learned the technique.

S.N: Your portraits have an ability to make everyone you photograph look more beautiful than they are … You sort of detect and then exaggerate an ordinary beauty, and turn your characters into "superstars."

Y.N: This comes from the way I see them really … again, as in old movies, where everyone was beautiful, had to be beautiful. Everyone looked great in those movies, the old actors and the young ones. This is how I see people. I don't see wrinkles—even though sometimes a wrinkle can be very beautiful, but I try to present people at their best.

S.N: How did you get started?

Y.N: It was in August 1992, when I first called some friends from school to ask them to play roles in little scenes that I had written and wanted to photograph. These scenes were very cinematic. I was studying French literature at Ain Shams University in Cairo, but I decided that I wanted to do what I loved most, which was photography. First I was shooting only in black and white, then later I decided to color my photographs by hand, to keep this old feeling in them. People didn't understand what I was doing at first, but soon I had clients calling and asking me to photograph them in the way that I did these first photographs. It happened so fast even I was surprised. Then in November, while shooting a friend at the Marriott Hotel in Zamalek, a young American guy saw me and started asking me questions about where to get these films, and how to find models to shoot for his assignment in Egypt. It was David LaChapelle, with whom I worked in New York afterwards, from 1993 to 1994. After this I went back to Cairo, finished my studies at university, my military service … In 1997, through a common friend, I met Mario Testino in Cairo, then went to Paris and worked with him between 1997 and 1998. Then I decided I wanted to return to Cairo and started exhibiting my work.

S.N: I find that in your self-portraits, there is a narrative aspect to the photographs that does not exist in other portraits you take. Perhaps it has to do with the way you can afford to take time, and the way that, for example, you emphasize the background, whether interior or exterior landscape. Your self-portraits become a type of diary. As you travel through places, we see geographical locations changing, but what remains constant is you. It feels like through these images, you are trying to say something about yourself, or that experience … that journey, or that single moment. What is your explanation for your self-portraits?

Y.N: My self-portraits tell a different story from the portrait work. I've always been very aware that every moment I live will be a memory soon afterwards. It's the idea of leaving, that we might be here now but leave for somewhere else afterwards. This idea was in all my thoughts, this force of life that is stronger than us. Also in relation to death, of course … I understood at a very young age that we are here to leave, not to stay; that no one lives forever, everyone must go. I do my self-portraits in cities that I visit, in which I am just a visitor. I know I will be leaving in a few days. I feel the same about my whole life, up until death. For me living is about coming to a place that is not yours, then having to go.

S.N: I see in your self-portraits Youssef the performer, the actor, the storyteller. I'm curious whether you actually operate the camera or someone else does. Are you like Cindy Sherman, for example, who I believe is usually alone in her room—she sets up the photos, then "click"? It's interesting because in Cindy's case, when you meet her, you discover how timid she is, and then one wonders how she can be so animated in front of the camera. Is this simply the question of "privacy" that allows an artist to become totally free, either to play a role or to truly reveal themselves?

Y.N: I definitely have to be by myself when making these works—it is a very personal process. I'm not surprised that Cindy Sherman is a shy person. I think someone could easily play roles in front of the camera and still be a shy person. But I definitely have to be by myself, although this is not easy as I shoot most of the self-portraits outdoors, and there are always a few people around. I take the photographs by myself, but I've had to ask for assistance a few times, especially in those photographs where I am really far away from the camera. In Self-Portrait, Vincennes, 2003, I was on the other side of a river so I had to have an assistant with me.

S.N: Self-portraiture is a very sensitive subject. I'm a very self-conscious person, I really don't like being in front of the camera, and I stopped posing for my own photographs back in the late nineties. But I remember that while I was shooting self-portraits, it was always that I was performing another character. I by no means wanted the portraits to say something about myself. The images almost had a sociological approach to them; they became rather iconic, studies of people. What Cindy Sherman does in a way is very similar: she acts, she plays roles of people with whom she has absolutely nothing in common. But your self-portraits in a way become studies of you, as if you are trying to discover something about yourself, and you share that experience with your viewer. So we approach self-portraiture for totally different purposes.

Y.N: It was mainly in 2003 that I started doing them. It was the year I left Egypt to live in France. I left my life in Cairo behind, and I found myself in a totally new place. I started asking myself questions about life, my life, my country, and the idea of being away. In a way, I felt that I had closed a door behind me, that I was no longer the person I used to be. Again it was the idea of leaving. So I decided to talk about this in my work. But you know, self-portraits sort of come to me, I never really plan to do them in advance. I did one recently when I was in Los Angeles. I saw this very old tree next to my hotel. Its roots came out of the ground and went all over … I saw the roots and I thought of life and where I come from. I decided to make a self-portrait there, with roots.

S.N: This takes us to the next topic I'd like to bring up, the idea of contemporary "nomads," like the two of us, who are constantly on the move from one place to another. In your self-portraits you seem to focus a lot on the notion of memory, the passage of time, and places that you have experienced.

Y.N: I've never really felt that I belong to one place. I've always felt like part of a circus team—now we are in this city, tomorrow we move somewhere else. I became familiar with this idea and what it takes emotionally to start all over again somewhere else. But I am a very nostalgic person, and the most difficult part for me is leaving people I love—my friends and family, places I used to go to, the particular light or smell of each city I have lived in. I don't know how long this will last. I guess it is our choice. Do you feel like you belong to one place?

S.N: Not at all, I'm also in a constant state of geographical and psychological shift as I move about the world. For example, the past few days I've been obsessing about my memories of Morocco, how this time last year I was living there, how I was a different person, in a different community of friends, a totally different culture … and somehow as I look back, I can't help but feel a sort of sadness in how that experience is gone and cannot be repeated. Generally, I find history, memory, and the feeling of nostalgia very painful emotions. In your self-portraits I also detect a strong feeling of melancholy, even pain, and I'm surprised to hear you talk about the subject of death so much …Why is that?

Y.N: I thought a lot about death when I was a child. It was actually a very painful discovery for me as a kid. I started thinking that someone I love might die, and I prayed to God all the time to keep everyone I love alive. I have no idea why I became obsessed with this and just couldn't be at peace with it. I wanted the people I love never to die. But once I started exhibiting my work, I felt that I would have to leave Egypt. A big, important part of it was that I felt I needed to go somewhere where I would feel freer to show the work I do. My work has always had a sexual connotation to it, and not everyone was happy with that. I felt it in so many ways, especially when I started showing on exhibitions, and I sort of felt that there are two Egypts living next to each other—the very modern one I grew up in, and a very conservative one. Unfortunately the conservative one is the majority.

S.N: Now let me bring up another subject which is that, for artists such as myself and yourself, Ghada Amer, and many other artists we know, although we are Middle Eastern and our topics often refer to our own cultures, our work is mostly viewed by Westerners. So we all risk this idea of the Orientalization of our cultures. In fact, many people from our own culture accuse us of making "exotic" work for Westerners to fulfill their curiosities and fantasies about Muslim countries, whether our topics are political or sexual … And at times we have been attacked by Muslim artists living in the Middle East who question the credibility of artists who no longer live on their own turf, yet whose art somehow functions as a type of dialogue about their homelands. How do you position yourself as an artist? Do you think that distance from one's country in fact gives the proper freedom and necessary perspective?

Y.N: I don't think it's about where you actually live. For me it is about being honest, and about what you feel about yourself. No one can really tell us that you're less Iranian or that I'm less Egyptian because we live in the West, or that you're not supposed to be this or that … We talk about issues that are related to us; we cannot do work that we have no relation to. One of the most beautiful things that I saw when we were in Morocco last year for your filming was how you created a whole Iran in the middle of Morocco! And you did it before in Mexico. You were paying attention to all the details in order to create your country somewhere else, and I find that very poetic. I think you leave your country only when you have to, when you feel that you can't live there any more. You leave and try to find another place, where other people share your ideas, your thoughts, and your problems. In a way these people become like family and you create your own country around you, and this is what each of us did in a different way.

S.N: I find your photographs sexually charged, very erotic, which I find very courageous considering your culture and all the sexual taboos that you face.

Y.N: It's very important for me to feel free about what I want to say or photograph. Even while living in Egypt, I always managed to show some nudity in my shows there. It was never in a vulgar way, but still I was criticized for doing it. You know, I was surprised to find that in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Cairo there are a lot of nude portrait paintings. In my shows people were actually more shocked by the fact that it is photography. I think people tend to be more open minded and accepting toward a painted nude, because it could be from the artist's imagination or something, but with photography, this is not the case. Photography is more real and direct; people are sure that someone was actually naked in front of the camera, and they don't like that. For me it was never about showing nudity. For me it was about being true and honest and getting to know someone in the most intimate way. But you know, I feel the same way about your work—some of your work is very erotic.

S.N: It's very true. My characters, as much as they are often concealed, are also very erotic. The portraits, particularly from the Women of Allah series, clearly touch on how sexuality is taboo in Islamic cultures, but sex is everywhere and unavoidable. In fact, the religious restrictions seem to heighten the sexual experience, the temptation for the opposite sex. One becomes quite imaginative with the slightest hint of an open shirt, a gaze, or modest body language, just as your photographs show. Very few Muslim artists that I know seem to have the luxury of showing their art both in their own country and in the West. In the case of some artists like you and me, our public is mostly outside of our country, and at home people can only access it through the Internet. We therefore have a divided audience, with some who don't entirely understand the work but are drawn to it (in the West), and others who understand it but mostly dismiss it (in the Middle East). So we as artists learn to live in what they call the global village, and try to survive both emotionally and professionally. Needless to say, I'm frustrated by often reductive and simplistic readings of my work by Western critics, who I think lack the proper cultural and historical knowledge about my background. How do you feel about the way your art has been interpreted in the West?

Y.N: I've had a similar experience, but I've never felt it's a real problem. I think it's part of who we are. Of course, if we show our work in the West, they are always going to pick up on issues that are related to our culture—Islam, veiled women, sex issues, et cetera, what you can and cannot show in your country—because they will never really see you as an American artist, although you have lived most of your life in the United States. I don't think it is a problem—it will always be the case, and it always has been for many artists. You know, it has happened so many times that the subject of Iran comes up in conversation, and I find a lot of people immediately think of your work as a strong reference to what is going on. In a way, you have become like a speaker for a whole nation, involuntarily—I don't think you intended to, it just happened. I think it will always be like this.

S.N: In many ways, it appears as if we're fighting the battle on both grounds. On the one hand, in the West, we are resisting Western clichés and stereotypes about our cultures and trying to insist on all the complexities of our societies as well as the universal values of our art. And in the Middle East, we often face prejudices as many find us suspicious as artists who no longer live in their own countries but choose subjects related to their authentic culture. Having been a frequent subject of your portraits, I've noticed that you always manage to get the best out of the person you're photographing. I don't know how to explain it. How do you approach your characters before you take their portraits? I remember in the portraits you did of me last year in Casablanca, we only had ten minutes together!

Y.N: It is very important for me to like the person, to like his or her work, or simply how he or she looks. In your case it's all three of these. I need to kind of agree with the idea behind the person I will photograph; I need to want to keep part of them living with me, through my work. It is like a big family or a big land to which I invite people I like.

S.N: Then there's also the way you get your characters to perform in front of your camera, the way you beautify them, and the way you intervene after the photograph is taken by painting it. It reminds me again of film making, where as the director you choose actors, you have to work with them, dress them, and then try to get the best performance out of them. I remember the first time we met, and you asked me to wear my favorite jewelry … it was a little like playing dress up, something that I really enjoy but am often too shy to try.

Y.N: It is definitely a role that you play, and I either have to choose the right person to play this role, or create a story around a person whose character I already like. I like people with strong characters. I like strong women, like Tracey Emin, Zaha Hadid, Marina Abramovi´c, or Fifi Abdou in Egypt. For me they are already icons of our times without really choosing to be. But you know, when I think of women artists who have a very unique look or beauty, among the very few who come to mind are you and Frida Kahlo.

S.N: She's one of my favorite artists too. What I like about Frida is that her beauty is not about vanity, it's about an inner beauty. Her obsession with jewelry is similar to how she liked to surround herself with beautiful objects. It made her complete … She was feminine and masculine, tough and delicate, strong and weak. In my opinion she became even more beautiful with age. Her physical pain—as devastating as it was—never robbed her of her style. She was a true inspiration, an artist whose art became total—she was her art, she wore her art … To this date, you cannot think about Frida's art without thinking about her self image, her body, her style.

Y.N: She was also very Mexican in the way she dressed, her make-up, jewelry, the flower crowns she wore. She never copied anyone else; she herself was a work of art. I remember the first time I laid eyes on her, I immediately fell in love with her picture, the way she wore these crowns of flowers. It was in 1993 in New York. I was supposed to go to Martinique for a shoot with David LaChapelle but couldn't get a visa. So I stayed in his apartment in the East Village, and found this book in my room—it was her first biography that came out in the United States. And I became very interested in knowing more about her and her work. So I spent the whole time in New York reading about her. She was very human in the way she represented herself, and I was deeply affected by the fact that she exhibited her pain, her suffering, her sorrow. You've been living in New York since 1983. I imagine New York in the eighties was a great experience. I missed it, but the first time I came to New York, in 1993, I stayed in the East Village. At that time people always said that the East Village still had something left from the eighties. I think all the fun happened in the eighties. I was in Cairo at the time, dreaming of living in New York, reading about all the artists there. I was a teenager, and I made a big collage on the wall behind my bed with pictures of all the artists I liked, like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. I always knew that I would live in New York one day; I was almost sure of it. I knew that somehow I belonged there.

S.N: I remember in 1983, when I was in my early twenties, I arrived in NYC and moved to the East Village. At that time, the East Village was a central place for underground art galleries. Although the economy seemed to be booming, the underground scene was the attraction. I remember at art openings you often ran into Haring, Andy Warhol, Basquiat, and on the club scene you could find Madonna performing. I dated a well-known graffiti artist who showed with the Tony Shafrazi gallery, so through him I met several well-established artists. The scene was very multicultural; there were a lot of Hispanic and African American artists, break dancers. There was truly an exciting and bohemian atmosphere in New York.

Y.N: At that time, were you dreaming of becoming an artist?

S.N: Soon after I arrived in NYC, I thought, "Forget about being an artist" … I became extremely intimidated by galleries and the competitive nature of making it as an artist. I decided I would be happy just to be an observer. Plus there was also the reality that I had to earn money to survive … so I took jobs while still living in the East Village and following the art world. I also worked for about ten years at a non-profit gallery, Storefront for Art and Architecture, which became an opening to a whole new world, and a great education. Then one day in 1993, by total accident, I saw a flyer asking emerging artists for proposals for a solo exhibition at the well-known Franklin Furnace, an alternative gallery. I had just been in Iran and had some ideas, so I wrote a one-page proposal, and to my shock I was accepted. I went on to produce several photographs and two videos, and made a show … So this became the beginning, exactly ten years after I arrived in NYC.

Y.N: It feels great when you do it on your own—when you really want to realize something, and spend all your life trying, till you get it. I started with very little—I had no money, not even a camera to use. I borrowed my first camera from a friend, then tried to save all the money I made to buy this camera so I could continue to work, to take more pictures. I had no place to shoot except for my bedroom, which I shared with my twin brother. I can't count the nights I had to ask him to sleep in our living room, because I would put both beds on top of each other and use the space in order to turn our bedroom into a studio. Then I had to save every penny to try to buy an airplane ticket and go to New York for the first time, and to try to show my work in New York. When I first came here, I had very little money and immediately started looking for a job. It felt really strange that I suddenly had to think of how to survive in this wild place. I just wanted to stay here as long as possible. I wanted things to happen. I wanted to meet people and show them my work. So I realized that I had to forget about all the comforts I had in Egypt, and I adapted to this new situation, where I only had to think of how to stay here as long as possible. I had to do jobs like pizza delivery, I worked in a vintage posters place, then in a restaurant, and I can tell you that I wasn't good at all in any of these jobs. I was thinking all the time of my art career.

S.N: I was in a similar situation when I came to NYC after getting my Master of Fine Arts degree from a university in Berkeley, California. This degree did not help me to find a job, so I started out working as a receptionist at a fancy hair salon, where I was fired after a short while for being bored. Later I worked at a textile company, designing patterns for fabrics … a very silly job. One day I could not handle the job any more—I walked over to my boss and said, "I quit! I'd rather be a poor artist than work here." This was the happiest day of my life.

Y.N: These are like chapters in our lives. One chapter ends, another one opens.

S.N: You're right, there seems to be one chapter after another in life. My life has been one unpredictable pattern that has been blown in different directions, and sometimes I wonder what is next. People like you and I have not followed in our parents' footsteps or the normal paths that people seem to take in life, where there is usually some comfort of predictability …We seem to thrive on the unknown. Taking risks in our personal lives seems integral with our art making practice.

Y.N: Uncertainty is so big in our lives because we never really knew where the future would take us. You know, I feel sometimes that I am living in my own movie—that I'm just here to witness what is going to happen. Don't you feel that way sometimes?

S.N: Yes, I really do. I have to say I get incredibly nervous when things become too normal.

Y.N: I think we will feel like this for the rest of our lives.

New York, June 2008

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