Life on the CAPS

PYLON is excited to present the online screening of Meriem Bennani's film "Life on the CAPS" (2022) starting Friday, August 18, 2023.

Meriem Bennani was born in 1988, in Rabat, Morocco and today lives and works in New York City, New York. Bennani received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2012 after receiving her MFA in Animation from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France in 2011. Moving between the aesthetics of reality television, documentary, animation, and more, Bennani’s videos and installations embrace play and the absurd, while contemplating the intricacies of human behavior. The artist often draws from lived experiences within her practice, beginning with a subject like migration and diasporic identity, or a figure, like the Chikha, and building imaginative worlds around them. Drawing on documentary or vérité styles, Bennani’s videos disrupt the logic of such media, injecting animated characters, the tropes of science fiction or music videos. Moments of humor and the unexpected break the seriousness of the artist’s subject matter, creating points of access for audiences to connect with the characters and think differently about complicated social, political or cultural questions.

The online screening is part of the curatorial program NEWS FROM NOWHERE by PYLON, including a series of on- and offline screenings and exhibitions and will be on view until September 17, 2023. The screening is kindly supported by Landeshaupstadt Dresden - Amt für Kultur und Denkmalschutz and by Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen. Gefördert durch die Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen. Diese Maßnahme wird mitfinanziert durch Steuermittel auf der Grundlage des vom Sächsischen Landtag beschlossenen Haushaltes.