Press Release
Merging magical realism, absurdist humor, and techniques from a wide range of moving image genres, Meriem Bennani creates video series that tell stories about human behavior and our experiences on- and offline, tackling subjects such as language, displacement, and diasporic living. Employing production aesthetics and storytelling methods found in recognizable forms such as reality television, home videos, documentary film, cell phone videos, and animation, Bennani welcomes the viewer into narratives that feel like an amplification of reality. Bennani shares her videos in a variety of traditional and creative formats, from immersive projection installations, to screens embedded in colorful, cartoon-like sculptures, to social media platforms like Instagram.
On the High Line, Bennani realizes her first public sculpture, Windy, co-commissioned by High Line Art and Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Windy is a spinning sculpture in the shape of a tornado made from black foam. The work plays with various traditions and ambiguities of public sculpture. In many cases, the public is asked to walk around public sculpture, taking in its grandeur from a safe distance. Bennani’s sculpture spins itself, and at a speed that makes the details of the work almost impossible to grasp—both visually and physically. The work continues Bennani’s practice of creating large, geometric steel sculptures, which to date she has built to house her videos. Windy marks Bennani’s first sculpture that exists on its own terms, while the object’s movement continues her fascination with animation and the way that drawn and still characters come to life. In her conceptualization of the work, Bennani was inspired by the dynamism and constant movement on the High Line, wishing to make a sculpture that could capture and work within this urban energy.
