Meriem Bennani
In-Between Days
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Guggenheim Museum, New York
Bennani’s videos and immersive installations employ vernacular technologies and dark humor to examine issues around migration and femininity. Party on the CAPS imagines a dystopian near-future set on the fictional island of CAPS. Located halfway between the United States and North Africa, CAPS functions as an internment camp for immigrants who, in the process of detainment and deportation, have lost their integrity on a quantum level and developed intermittently appearing alien-like features. Shaped by the artist’s own experience as an immigrant and shot in her hometown in Morocco, the video features hallucinatory sequences and fantastical characters, including Fiona, an animated crocodile who guides viewers around the island by introducing its inhabitants, its music, and its cultures. Bennani considers the work to be a kind of documentary and presents CAPS as a metaphor for the worldwide migration crisis, traumas related to diasporic displacement, and social systems of power dictated by widespread surveillance and technological misuse.
—Ylinka Barotto, former Assistant Curator, and Nat Trotman, Curator, Performance and Media
