Meriem BennaniParty on the CAPS, 2018
01 Feb 2021 — 31 Mar 2021
A political commentary on Western immigration and surveillance policies
Meriem Bennani started developing Party on the CAPS in 2017 while researching subatomic teleportation in response to President Trump’s US travel ban. The work offers a political commentary on Western immigration and surveillance policies, summoning a dystopian reality only slightly different from our own. In her work, Bennani also pays tribute to human resilience and hybridity by resisting essentialist notions of identity and culture, instead addressing the in-between states of life in the diaspora. For her intervention on LAS’ platform, Bennani presents a fragment from her audiovisual work Party on the CAPS (2018) featuring the cartoon crocodile FIONA who guides us through bizarre scenes on the isolated, yet overpopulated island of the CAPS. This excerpt not only sets the scene for her video work, it also mirrors a stark reality of our present times.
Meriem Bennani
Meriem Bennani (b. 1988) is a New York-based artist from Morocco. Mixing the visual languages of reality TV, advertising, documentary film, phone-camera footage and high-end commercial aesthetics, Bennani explores the potential of storytelling through magical realism and humour. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Saatchi Gallery, London, MoMA PS1, New York and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.