“For My Best Family” presents a site-specific installation and a new art film, which are both the result of a profound reflection by Meriem Bennani (Rabat, Morocco, 1988) on the social and cultural dimensions of coexisting, on the intimate and complex aspects of one’s identity, and on the dialogue between the individual self and the community. Bennani’s works are immersive and irreverent, and call into question various aspects of contemporary life, its conflicts and contradictions.
This is the most ambitious project the artist has ever done in terms of complexity, size, and the length of the creative process, and it took more than two years to complete. Throughout her career, Bennani has pursued a shape-shifting practice that uses a variety of artistic languages including video, 3D animation, sculpture, and installation. Her research questions contemporary society and its fractured identities, gender issues, and the ubiquitous power of digital technologies in our lives.
On exhibit on the ground floor of the Podium is Sole crushing (2024), a complex mechanical installation in which 192 flip-flops and slippers, animated by a pneumatic system, perform a polyphonic choreography which alternates between synchronized sequences and states of chaos. The work is reminiscent of the duende—the mysterious power epitomized by Spanish flamenco, bullfights, and ancient ballads—and several traditional Moroccan musical forms such as the deqqa marrakchia, in which percussion and movement culminate in group ecstasies. Sole crushing takes a humorous and political approach to exploring the social dynamics and energy released en masse in such group situations as political demonstrations and protests, fans cheering sports in stadiums, and collective states of delirium or hallucination.
On the first floor of the Podium is the screening of For Aicha (2024), an art film co-directed by Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki and made in collaboration with John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs. Set in New York, Rabat, and Casablanca, in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals, the film falls somewhere between realism, autobiography, and movie fiction, blending the languages of documentary film and 3D animation. For Aicha follows the adventures of Bouchra, a young Moroccan jackal-filmmaker, and explores the complex relationship between the protagonist and her mother, the meaning of family ties, and the nuances of daughterhood. Bennani and Barki create a universe that combines personal narrative with broader thoughts on the socio- political and cultural contexts that influence our life experiences.
The two works can be interpreted in relation to the history of animated cinema. In Sole crushing, there is a quality that recalls the first ‘anarchic’ phase of cartoons from the early 1900s, when the characters were not yet constrained by realistic human anatomy or representation. The slippers and flip-flops in the installation seem to come to life, in alternating sequences of chaos, organized rhythm, and flexible movements with a humorous quality. In the 1930s, when the movie industry began to produce animated works, cartoon characters lost their archetypal qualities, becoming more realistic and acquiring a psychological dimension that made it easier for the viewer to identify with them. This is also the case in For Aicha.
“A central theme of “For My Best Family” is how to be together, questioning where we start and stop as people. In the film, it is very much about a daughter and mother learning to be together, whereas in the installation, it is a more abstracted idea of being together as a larger collective—moments of being together that are non-verbal, where it seems like there is a force that takes the form of a multitudinous body. Almost like a puppet, that multitude becomes one, one voice, one way of acting, and everyone knows what they are supposed to do in that moment. Either rhythmically or in terms of chanting, or the way they use their body and stomp. I am interested in animation’s capacity as a medium to question how to be together and what it looks like to be alive.”
—Meriem Bennani
at Fondazione Prada, Milan
until February 24, 2025