mechanized flip-flops beat their ‘drums’ in meriem bennani’s exhibition at fondazione prada

meriem bennani’s mechanized installations at fondazione prada

At Fondazione Prada in Milan, Meriem Bennani presents For My Best Family, running between October 31st, 2024 and February 24th, 2025. It’s an exhibition that touches on connectivity and relationships – of being an individual that performs with others, and soon they function as one – using mechanized and kinetic-like flip-flops and slippers, rhythmic sounds, and an animated movie. During the opening of her exhibition, Meriem Bennani tells designboom that she doesn’t think she’s had much sense of belonging. She has always felt like she belongs in ways, but she recognizes that there are things in herself and in her life that are different.

‘I’ve definitely belonged, for example, in my high school circle and family, but there’s this feeling of something’s different, which everyone can feel. My femininity feels different too from the women in my family, but I think feeling different is just very formative. You’re already taking a step back, which is kind of what you do as an artist or filmmaker to be able to observe. So it’s maybe this ‘observing’ that I’m supposed to belong in a group that has made me appreciate the group as a collective,’ Meriem Bennani shares with designboom.

all photos by Delfino Sisto Legnani – DSL Studio, courtesy of Fondazione Prada (unless stated) | video © designboom

Art movie at the exhibition ‘for my best family’

Meriem Bennani’s exhibition at Fondazione Prada includes mechanical and kinetic installations where 192 mechanized flip-flops and slippers tap and thud on their wooden boards and steel plates in a rhytmic and performative sound ballet. These segmented sculptural works are laid down around the Podium floor, and they produce a cacophony of folkloric beats that ring out the entire space. The floor above shows the second part of the exhibition. Here, the Moroccan artist plays an animation art film she co-directed with Orian Barki.

The art movie tells the story of a mother and her daughter and what their relationship has weathered and gone through since the young woman came out to her parents. The plot pivots back to the mechanical installation on the Podium as they both attempt to dissect the meaning and essence of family and connection: the installation for being a part of a larger collective and functioning; the film for understanding the separation and growth of a kinship.

Exhibition View of ‘For My Best Family’ at Fondazione Prada

inside meriem bennani’s exhibition at fondazione prada

The staging of Merriem Bennani’s exhibition at Fondazione Prada is thorough and thought of. On the Podium where the Soul Crushing installations are, visitors see groups of flip-flops and slippers. When they enter, the first numerous footwear greets them on an undulating and ladderized wooden base to their right. To their left, there’s another stage of flip-flops, positioned as if they were in a choir. This part sits in the middle of two spiraling sculptures, still with slippers hammering out wooden planks. In the middle of the entire Podium, there’s an isolated island with two slippers tapping their circular metal plates, suggesting that they’re the conductors of the performance.

The sound ballet isn’t a random composition of noises. The Morrocan artist taps music producer Reda Senhaji, aka Cheb Runner, to orchestrate a soundtrack that the mechanical and kinetic installations play. It’s inspired by traditional Moroccan musical forms such as the deqqa marrakchia, laced with folkloric rhythms and beating often reverberated by tribal drums. These hundreds of flip-flops and slippers put on a show with an original soundtrack on their own as if they were living beings. There are wires and plugs connected to each platform of the footwear, and they’re all linked to the ‘pneumatic system’, programmed to sync all of the flip-flops and slippers’ beats.

Soul Crushing, Meriem Bennani

As viewers proceed to the first floor of Fondazione Prada, they find a cinema-like space for the screening of the animated art film, For Aicha, the next part of the exhibition. Meriem Bennani co-directs the 73-minute movie with documentarist and filmmaker Orian Barki under the creative production of John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs. During the preview that designboom attended, John Michael Boling and Orian Barki say that it has taken the team over two years to complete the animated feature.

The plot takes the viewers into the life of Bouchra, a 35-year-old Moroccan jackal and filmmaker living in New York, as she writes, produces, and directs an autobiographical film exploring her queerness and the way her coming out has impacted her mother, Aicha, a cardiologist living in her hometown, Casablanca. It’s intentional to make the movie feel and look like a documentary, from the shot angles down to the way the scripts are spoken and voiced. It’s an attempt to unpack, then wrap up again, what family means and the depth of familial relationships.

192 flip-flops and slippers tap and thud on wooden boards and steel plates

The points of tension in the movie caused by Aicha sweeping Bouchra’s queerness under the rug for around nine years can bring the viewers back to the raucous and thunderous beating of the mechanized flip-flops and sandals just a floor below them. As the two main characters reach their resolution, so does the composition of the footwear when they finish their symphony. Both of them might need someone and something to work well because they are a part of someone and something: Bouchra with her mother, and the flip-flops and slippers with their programmed pneumatic system. Before the movie preview where designboom shows up at, Meriem Bennani stands before the audience to let us know how the installations and the movie came to life.

She prefers to talk about her emotional response to something, and for her exhibition at the Fondazione Prada, it’s about being a part of a big group, a crowd. ‘What happens when you’re in a big crowd? Why is it so irresistible to do the same thing as the other people? What happens when you realize you’re a part of humanity?’ she wonders. ‘When you start to play music, people sing and clap, but how do they know when to clap? It’s almost like an instinct – this visceral response to being in society, with people. It’s almost like there’s a system that’s making them breathe together. It’s like they’re all connected in a network.’ It’s that connection that she manages to find, leading to an exhibition that seeks to understand the dynamics of being connected, like a family.

the series of footwear is connected to a programmed ‘pneumatic’ system