Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani embraces technology and social media to share her comical view of life. On her Instagram profile, she shares many of her clever CGI art videos. At the beginning of the interview, she is seen walking around New York with her camera ready to film any ordinary scenes she encounters. These videos are the base of her work and they give her the advantage of adding, manipulating or transforming the objects and people in the video. She can turn ordinary people into characters of her own narrative through the digital effects she adds. In a place where that is seemingly normal or boring, she can add quirky effects that make the viewers laugh and smile. She gives us a look into her creative mind through a series of projects she posts through her social media platforms. On Instagram, she posts one minute long videos, that I imagine takes her countless hours to create. And although her videos rack up thousands of "likes" her art still shares important messages.
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| Photo by Tom Kneller |
In Ghariba/ Stranger, she follows four women in her family while in Morocco. She describes the process of documenting her family as "Two extremes". Bennani states, "I almost feel emotionally like a monster who traps family members into this digital world" while the other extreme is "fully loving and celebrating family". As her family members tell their stories and introduce herself, she seizes opportunities to add effects that coincide with the dialogue or sometimes she adds effects that are totally surprising. Such as when her mother is telling a story about Egyptian vs. Moroccan guys she adds a romantic starry sky. Another example is when one of her family members is walking a dog outside and says, "Isn't the residence beautiful?" while the ground is aflame around her.
She also produced a video of a 3-D fly that takes the viewer around Morocco, almost like a tour guide. It is very humorous as the fly is seen laid back in an outdoor market while real flies are buzzing around and landing on the food. In an exhibition, she had a room where 12 channels could be played at once. She took advantage of this setting and played with the fact that flies have compounded vision. The video she edited was played simultaneously all over the room almost making it seem like the viewer is a fly as well.
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| Photo from ArtForum |
In a project created for the Barclay's Center called "Your Year", Bennani took a different approach with the animations she would choose to create. She decided to research and interview women who wear hijabs and to get a sense of how they connect to their headscarves. She did not want to make it seem like she was taking this task lightly, but she did want it to celebrate these women who wear hijabs. She recognized that some women wear hijabs in countries that do not understand the purpose or meaning behind them, so she played with that stance. She created a hijab that would morph for every holiday, even American holidays. Doing this makes the statement that Muslim women in America should be included as well.
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| Photo: Art21 |
Meriem Bennani states that she takes footage not for its actual content, but as a way to disconnect from reality and as we currently live in a world going through a pandemic we could all use some of that right now.
Your entry is very well written. I like that you included a variety of works by the artists so that readers can get a good idea of the kind of work Bennani does. Her work sounds very contemporary with the use of social media as a platform to display it. I think this is a smart way to show art, especially now that there is a pandemic, since Bennani can still create and display her works to the world. I also like that her art has the ability to allow people to escape from reality, no matter what they might be going through.
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