Mereim Bennani. For My Best Family
Fondazione Prada, Milan
From October 31st, 2024 until February 24th, 2025
Meriem Bennani’s new exhibition project develops a multisensory environment within the Podium’s spaces. The exhibition combines a novel and expansive site-specific installation with an art film set between New York and Casablanca, suspended between the real world, autobiographical aspects, and fiction. For My Best Family is the most ambitious project the artist has created to date. The complexity is incredible, as are the scale of the works and the duration of the creative process, with more than two years of activity. The first installation is Sole crushing: a large mechanical setup aimed at evoking states of catharsis, chaotic events, and collective rituals. Movements, sounds, and objects take shape and life in a vibrant and breathing harmony. Ballet merges with revolt, and it is up to the spectator to decide which way the needle will tip. The installation is accompanied by a 45-minute musical composition, a symphonic evolution composed especially for the work. The multitude of elements, movements, sounds and spaces becomes an organism with a single breath, harmonious and rhythmic at the same time. A perfect balance between the flip flops and the space, between the sound they emit and the materials used, a sort of organised disorganisation, which seems confusing and unclear but is actually only made possible by a careful and meticulous study of incredible mechanics. The work, like a dialogue, is made of sounds but also of pauses, of silent moments, of reflection. Of high and deep notes, of emptiness. Of crowd and solitude, of instinct and utopia.
The new art film For Aicha is projected in a replicated cinema hall on the first floor of the Podium. Directed by Brian Barki and Meriem Bennani and created with the creative production of John Michael Boiling and Jason Coombs, it is the culmination of a long creative process that blends the languages of documentary with 3D animation. The two environments also share a common history; the installation refers to the first phase of the animated film, where the story takes shape and objects come to life, interact with each other, and respond to the environment, while the film reaches the core of the realization: the full narrative potential. The choice to use animals to tell stories stems from the need to identify subjects that seemingly belong to an innocent and harmless scenario. The narration presents clearly autobiographical references by the artist herself, who reflects on the central theme so dear to the contemporary art world of relationships, of being together. Relationship is the exchange of energy, it is dialogue, and participation. It is the core of being in the moment, it is the need to take one’s time, and the need to find oneself in an overall vision. It is the whole that becomes one, it is the multiple that becomes the individual.
Bennani’s practice, born in Morocco in 1988, explores the power of narrative medium in all its facets. Reality is often amplified and distorted through so-called magical realism, with humor and the typical languages of YouTube videos, reality TV, documentaries, and the aesthetics of large productions also intervening. Her work is constantly evolving, drawing inspiration from films, sculptures, immersive installations, with the ultimate common goal of questioning the society around us, the contemporary world with its fragmented and ever-changing identities. Gender issues are another key focus, as is the omnipresent power of digital technologies. The narrative form thus becomes a powerful tool for addressing current and controversial topics, but in an inclusive, inventive, and engaging form.
For further information fondazioneprada.org.
