Meriem Bennani’s “For My Best Family” Debuts at Fondazione Prada

New Installation and Film Explore Concepts of Family and Community in Contemporary Settings

Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani will open her latest exhibition, “For My Best Family,” at Fondazione Prada in Milan on October 31. Running until February 24, 2025, the exhibition features a blend of site-specific installations and an art film, all designed to question identity, social structures, and collective behaviors. Bennani’s double screening of her work will take place at Fondazione Prada’s Cinema Godard at 3:15 p.m. and 5 p.m., followed by a conversation at 7 p.m. between the artist, curator Paolo Moretti, and Katya Inozemtseva. The event is open to the public, with free booking available on fondazioneprada.org.

Known for merging reality with surreal elements and employing diverse formats like YouTube aesthetics, reality TV, animation, and high-production visuals, Bennani creates immersive environments that explore social themes, including gender and digital influence. This Milan exhibition unfolds across two levels of Fondazione Prada’s Podium, combining large-scale kinetic installations with Bennani’s latest art film, “For Aicha,” co-directed with Orian Barki.

“A central theme of ‘For My Best Family’ is how to be together, questioning where we start and stop as people,” Bennani explains. “In the film, it’s very much about a daughter and mother learning to be together, whereas in the installation, it is a more abstracted idea of collective unity. There are non-verbal moments that feel like a force, becoming one voice, one way of acting, as if everyone knows what they are supposed to do in that moment, rhythmically or physically.” The exhibition, which took over two years to develop, represents Bennani’s most ambitious project to date in terms of scale and complexity.

On the ground floor, Bennani’s “Sole Crushing” animates 192 flip-flops and slippers into a dynamic arrangement of “orchestras,” spirals, and islands. The flip-flops are connected to a pneumatic system that activates each item on a drum surface, creating unique sounds in a choreographed sequence. This rhythmic space reflects the communal spirit seen in Moroccan musical forms, such as deqqa marrakchia, while evoking stadium-like atmospheres, hallucinatory states, and elements of protest.

The first floor of the Podium houses a cinematic space for “For Aicha,” Bennani’s new film directed with Barki and produced by John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs. This work, set between New York, Rabat, and Casablanca, follows Bouchra, a 35-year-old Moroccan jackal and filmmaker, as she crafts an autobiographical film about her queerness and its effect on her mother, Aicha, a cardiologist jackal living in Casablanca. The characters’ portrayal as anthropomorphic animals in animation offers a unique means to address complex topics within a fictional framework, making Bennani’s narratives approachable while tackling contemporary issues.

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