Collection Focus / Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS
Meriem Bennani
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2155 Center Street, Berkeley, CA 94704
Wed-Sun 11am-7pm (galleries close at 5pm through Jan 18)
Admission
Paid Admission
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About
Meriem Bennani (b. 1988, Rabat, Morocco; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York) is a multidisciplinary artist working across the moving image, sculpture, and installation. Fueled by the accelerating ubiquity of technology and visual culture, Bennani's approach to video is a layered amalgamation of visual languages spanning documentary, social media, cartoons, and reality television. Through this composite visuality, Bennani constructs fictitious worlds that expose the dynamics of power that persist in the postcolonial histories of Morocco and the wider African continent. This exhibition is the California debut of Bennani's acclaimed video trilogy Life on the CAPS (2018–22). Set in a dystopian future, the series takes place in the CAPS, a fictional island where migrants are interned after teleporting "illegally" across borders. The videos themselves mirror the liminal status of the CAPS residents, rendered with layers of live action footage and vivid animations that create an augmented reality. With Fiona, a crocodile and resident of the CAPS, as its guide, Bennani's film centers the resilience and dynamism of diasporic cultures even as they traverse the conditions of hyper-technological nation states and growing xenophobia. This presentation brings together Bennani's complete trilogy, including Party on the CAPS (2018), Guided tour of a spill (2021), and Life on the CAPS (2022), reexamining this groundbreaking video series, which has taken on increasing resonance today.