"For My Best Family," An exhibition by Meriem Bennani opens at Fondazione Prada in Milan
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Thursday, December 12, 2024


"For My Best Family," An exhibition by Meriem Bennani opens at Fondazione Prada in Milan
Exhibition view of “For My Best Family” by Meriem Bennani Photo: Delfino Sisto Legnani – DSL Studio. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.



MILAN.- The exhibition “For My Best Family” by artist Meriem Bennani opens to the public tomorrow, 31 October 2024, at Fondazione Prada in Milan until 24 February 2025. On Thursday 31 October, a double screening of Bennani’s videos, at 3:15 pm and 5 pm, and a conversation at 7 pm with the artist, Paolo Moretti and Katya Inozemtseva will be held at Fondazione Prada’s Cinema Godard. The talk is free upon booking at fondazioneprada.org.

Meriem Bennani (Morocco, 1988) explores the potential of storytelling while amplifying reality through a strategy of fantastical imagery and humor, juxtaposing and mixing the language of YouTube videos, reality TV, documentaries, animation, and high-production aesthetics. Throughout her career, 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 identities, gender issues, and ubiquitous dominance of digital technologies.

Bennani develops a multi-sensory environment for Fondazione Prada. It unfolds in the two levels of the Podium, the main exhibition building of the Milan headquarters. Combining a new site-specific, large-scale installation with an art film co-directed with Orian Barki, “For My Best Family” explores ways of being together in public and intimate socio-political settings. This project is the most ambitious work Bennani has ever done both in terms of complexity, size and the length of the creative process, which took more than two years to complete. It is part of a line of programming that Fondazione Prada has been pursuing for more than thirty years, involving collaborations with international artists to create utopian projects that are both conceptually and aesthetically complex.

As Bennani explains, “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.”

On the ground floor, Sole crushing is a large mechanical installation that animates 192 flip-flops and slippers into a ballet-symphony-riot and musical composition. The soundtrack was composed in collaboration with music producer Reda Senhaji aka Cheb Runner. This kinetic and complex system is designed as an archipelago of polyphonic groups in which a multitude of flip-flops are arranged in different conformations: two “orchestras,” two spiral sculptures and a central island. Each item is connected to a pneumatic system that makes it mobile, alive, and breathing and to a drum surface made of various materials that amplify the sound of the object that hits it. This humorous and organic space will evoke states of collective catharsis, chaotic and organized collective rituals like traditional Moroccan musical forms such as the deqqa marrakchia, architectures of spectacle like stadiums, states of delirium or hallucination, and protest.

The first floor of the Podium hosts a cinema-like space to screen For Aicha, a new art film directed by Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki under the creative production of John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs. Set between New York, Rabat and Casablanca, in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals and suspended between realism, autobiography, and fiction, this artwork is the culmination of a long creative process that blends documentary and 3D animation languages. For Aicha follows Bouchra, a 35-year-old Moroccan jackal and filmmaker living in New York, as she writes an auto-biographical film exploring how her queerness has impacted her mother Aicha, a cardiologist jackal living in Casablanca. The decision to use animated animals in this and previous works is a deliberate way of smuggling complicated messages in innocuous-seeming vessels. The narrative form of animation thus becomes a powerful device for addressing current and emerging topics in an inventive and intriguing form.










Today's News

October 31, 2024

Christie's presents The Rockefeller Mitchells: Science for the Benefit of Humanity

Original Christo drawing to be offered for sale in London

A 1997 Steinway ebony Model M baby grand piano headlines Ahlers & Ogletree's Estates & Collections auction

Tiffany masterpiece to star in Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction

The Vancouver Art Gallery opens the first exhibition in Canada dedicated to Firelei Báez

National Portrait Gallery and the Archives of American Art co-present "Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return"

"For My Best Family," An exhibition by Meriem Bennani opens at Fondazione Prada in Milan

Frick to reopen in April 2025

Newly designed Gallery for Arts of Korea open at Art Institute of Chicago

Family-friendly exhibition offers engaging exploration of Japanese culture through the centuries

Pace Gallery launches new online resource to mark 50th anniversary of Lynda Benglis's iconic Artforum advertisement

Unchained.Art Contemporary Gallery opens 'Art in the Age of AI: Evolution or End?'

The Prado Museum unveils a new depiction of The Decameron

Turin's Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art opens an exhibition of Maria Morganti's work

Speed Art Museum announces 2025 exhibitions

Group exhibition features the work of four artists who draw their inspiration from nature

Robert Schuman Collection tops $1.1 million at Heritage

Valuable long-lost 'Star Wars' toy packaging artwork leads Heritage's December action figures auction

Exhibition explores sleeping figures and dreams in art

Prints and Multiples sales total $17,507,992 at Christie's

Keil Space: Florence's multi-sensory art venue explored through QDAS studies on artistic wellness

Empowering art professionals: De Structura's blueprint for youth-led social change

HIDDEN gallery presents Yuki Asano's solo show on memory and nostalgia

The Ultimate Guide to Creating an Online Scrapbook

Keeping Cool at the Casino: Why Bankroll Management is Key for Monte Carlo Players

Impact of Online Casino Promotions on Gameplay at Lucky Green Casino

Elevate Your Space with Iconic Art Prints: Impressionist, Abstract, and Bauhaus

Coin Flip Simulator - Flip a Coin to Get Heads or Tails

Mithya Returns on ZEE5: A Darker and More Twisted Tale of Secrets and Lies




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful