The must-see exhibition where Bennani illustrates what a family is today

For every person, the family unit is the first place where they experience their relationship with each other. The family, as a nucleus in its own right, is itself a node in a dense network of relationships, imbued with cultures, influences and contradictions. Anyone who, as adulthood approaches, interposes a more or less extended space between the imagined future for themselves and their family, gains not without effort a privileged analytical vantage point on their origins.

In this way, one can draw a way back, which can be traversed fluidly, smoothing out the frictions, thanks to an ability to understand and listen that only hundreds of kilometers away can generate, and attributing a new value to that set of attitudes, recurrences, traditions and activities that shape the identity of every family, and consequently, of each community and society as a whole.

An artist like Meriem Bennani, class of 1988, born in Morocco and moved at a very young age to Paris and then to New York, where she still lives, has made experimentation and a sense of not belonging the starting point of her creative activity, which in a roundabout way has brought her right back there, to want to deepen her reflection on identity and the relationship between individuals.

This process is one of the aspects that emerges in the exhibition recently opened to the public at the Fondazione Prada, entitled For My Best Family, her first solo show in Italy and certainly the most ambitious project the artist has ever done in terms of the complexity, size and duration of the creative process, which took more than two years to complete. Just as Miranda July in the exhibition New Society had also explored the concept of family (and therefore society) as a field of exchange and dialogue, so Fondazione Prada follows up this need for community involvement with Meriem Bennani's works.

On the first floor of the Podium is the installation Sole Crushing (2024), which transforms the light-filled space into an agora, in which one hundred and ninety-two slippers, variously decorated to produce a plurality of sounds, are placed on wooden structure with a smooth and sophisticated design, and are animated by a pneumatic system that gives them breath to move in a visual and sound choreography that lasts about 45 minutes.

The dialogue between the parts is animated by different stages of agreement, balance, overlap, celebration and rebellion. The composition, created with musician Reda Senhaji known as Cheb Runner, is inspired by the deqqa marrakchia, with a structure of collective calls and responses, typical of moments of sociability, and by duende, the mysterious and intense force described by García Lorca, embodied in Spanish and Moroccan dances and rituals, and characterized by a shared cathartic expression. But it also recovers a familiar dimension, that of memories of parties paced by singing and music played with everyday objects such as cutlery and glasses, accompanied by the clapping of hands. The flip flops engage in a dialogue with each other and with the visitors, in a continuous exchange between the sides, in which even moments of silence acquire meaning, and the rhythmic solo of a single slipper can punctuate the time of the performance with its own voice.

Music intended as an element of conviviality in the Moroccan tradition, the choice to use slippers – footwear placed at the lowest level of the fashion system and at the same time identifying home comfort and the family dimension – the sense of controlled chaos, a subtle but accessible humor, and interaction with the public are all elements that like a common thread accompany visitors to the second floor of the Podium.

Here, a screening room following the design of Fondazione Prada cinema has been set up for visitors to view the animated feature For Aicha, an art film directed by Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki, with creative production by John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs.

Mixing the language of documentary and animation was a major challenge for the team: managing the immediacy of the former and the need for strict scheduling of the latter is one of the keys to this work, which Coombs recounted with the quote from animator and director Peter Chung “animation is the act of creating spontaneity through a process that could not be any less spontaneous”.

This pursuit of spontaneity is one of the hallmarks of the work of Bennani and Barki, who during the pandemic had already brought to life a universe similar to the one found in For Aicha, in the series 2 Lizards, initially published on Instagram and now part of the collection of the Whitney and MoMA New York. In 2 Lizards, two anthropomorphic lizards, alter egos of the two artists, traverse a city affected by prolonged isolation and demands for social justice reforms. The choice to make anthropomorphic animals the protagonists of the story proves to be powerful in translating the content of the work outside the box of reality to make it even more open and inclusive.

This is also the case in For Aicha, in which Bennani explores the complexities of the relationship between the filmmaker Bouchra and her mother Aicha, in an interweaving of autobiographical and fictional elements. The language of the film appears entirely familiar to us, through the eyes and words of jackals, lizards, frogs, and other humanized animals, in the narrative of a sense of normality and depth that each of us experiences in our everyday lives.

In both the creative process and the story of For Aicha, many themes of Bennani's imagery return: the sense of belonging and the need to explore different contexts, the search for one's identity, artistic experimentation, the approach to current events, the sense of family, emotional intimacy, the originality of language, and humor as the key to accessing her narrative.

In one scene of the film, Aicha's character discusses how art can serve as a means of healing. Just as the protagonist's journey of emotional discovery and her connections with others develop through her filmmaking, Bennani's work, characterized by a delicate touch, encourages viewers to reflect on their own relationships with themselves and others, both individually and within the larger community.

Opening image: Exhibition view of “For My Best Family” by Meriem Bennani. Photo: Delfino Sisto Legnani – DSL Studio. Courtesy Fondazione Prada