Retrospective of Meriem Bennani's films at MUCEM

For several years now, Meriem Bennani has been developing a protean practice of films, installations and immersive environments, interweaving references to globalized popular culture with the vernacular representation of her native Moroccan culture and the visual aesthetics she captures with her iPhone. Composed with a wry sense of humor and a subtle agility to divert clichés from Middle Eastern culture, her work questions our contemporary society and its fractured identities, questions of gender and the ubiquitous dominance of digital technologies.

Ghariba, by Meriem Bennani, 2017

18’

Ghariba (2017) is a playful and moving portrait of a few women in Morocco. Evoking reality TV, personal video and ethnographic film, its visual language is both intimate and whimsical, with the director's digital manipulations alternately amplifying and undermining her subjects' self-presentations.  

2 Lizards, by Meriem Bennani, 2020

22 min

Courtesy of the artist.

2 Lizards (2020) is an eight-episode animated series that depicts a surreal vision of the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two lizards move through a city plagued by pandemic and prolonged isolation and calls for social justice reform, highlighting helplessness and uncertainty as well as unexpected moments of shared community, with dialogue brilliantly reflecting the anxiety, boredom and absurd humor of confined life.  

Life on the CAPS, by Meriem Bennani

76’

Courtesy of the artist

The Life on the CAPS trilogy (2018-2022) is set in a supernatural, dystopian future on CAPS, a fictional island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that houses migrants caught illegally teleporting and settled in animated enclaves. Superimposing live action sequences and computer-generated animations, Bennani intuitively adapts editing techniques that evoke documentary film, science fiction, telephone sequences, music videos and reality TV.

Meriem Bennani

Meriem Bennani was born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1988 and now lives and works in New York. She is a graduate of The Cooper Union and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Her work has been shown at the Whitney Museum, MoMA PS1, The Guggenheim Museum, Julia Stoschek Collection in Berlin, Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Nottingham Contemporary, Renaissance Society in Chicago and Kamel Lazaar Foundation in Tunis.