Meriem Bennani. Life on the CAPS

26.02.2022 - 17.04.2022
Opening Reception: 26.02.2022 12:00

Meriem Bennani. Life on the CAPS

curator
Myriam Ben Salah

Life on the CAPS is a new chapter in Meriem Bennani’s film trilogy of the same name, set in a supernatural, dystopian future surrounding a fictional island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This new work is a result of the artist’s research and reflections on the histories of island societies, biotechnology, and vernacular music. Layering live action footage and computer-generated animation, Bennani intuitively adapts editing techniques that evoke documentary film, science-fiction, phone footage, music videos, and reality TV. Her exhibition at the Renaissance Society will mark the debut of this personal, electric yet melancholic consideration of what it is to live in a state of limbo.

This work owes much to Bennani’s intimate connections with collaborating actors, DJs, and other musicians, including musician and producer Fatima Al Qadiri who scored the piece. Enacting a variety of cunning shifts, Life on the CAPS moves fluidly from the imaginary to the geopolitical, between microscopic scale of DNA and the global eye of surveillance, the power of individual experience and power of collectivity, building on an emotive, formal experimentation that refutes boundaries.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Meriem Bennani (b. 1988 in Rabat, Morocco) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has been developing a shape-shifting practice of films, sculptures and immersive installations, composed with a subtle agility to question our contemporary society and its fractured systems, individual identity, and ubiquitous dominance of digital technologies. Bennani’s work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, The Guggenheim Museum, Art Dubai, The Fondation Louis Vuitton, Public Art Fund, The Kitchen, and CLEARING, among other venues.