Meriem Bennani

From New York, where she has been living for several years, the artist re-stages images and snapshots about the culture of the country of her birth, Morocco, showing an interest mainly in the place of women and the way they have been appropriating musical and sartorial customs.

Famous in Morocco, Siham and Hafida had never met before M. Bennani decided to make them the two leading actresses in her film (2017); Hafida, the eldest, is a dedicated chickha, a popular singer in the oral tradition of the Aïta. This musical style with its irreverent lyrics about the colonial society set up in Morocco in the late 19th century usually went hand-in-hand with important events, and represented a call for freedom. Today, this tradition still endures but through new figures, like the young Siham, whose performances are widely informed by the Internet and relayed on the social networks. Like a docu-fiction, M. Bennani films Siham and Hafida with all their distinctive and differing characteristics, questioning, alongside them, the changes in local traditions and their methods of transmission by the yardstick of globalization. In the La Criée exhibition space, the film breaks up into a whole host of projections within which the narrative diffracts and sometimes has fun with the appearance of animated effects; here a crab, there a butterfly, teasing the convictions of the two protagonists.

Siham & Hafida

production

• La Criée centre d’art contemporain, Rennes
• Stanley Picker gallery, Londres
• Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris
• les Ateliers de Rennes – biennale d’art contemporain