Whitney Biennial 2019
May 17–Oct 27, 2019
Meriem Bennani
8
Floor 5
Born 1988 in Rabat, Morocco
Lives in Brooklyn, NY
In her Biennial work, MISSION TEENS: French School in Morocco, Meriem Bennani interviews teenagers in Morocco who attend French schools, a relic of colonialism that the artist also experiences as a French-educated Moroccan. As in much of Bennani's video work, MISSIONS TEENS combines multiple visual languages, drawing on the aesthetic and narrative conventions of documentary, reality television, advertising, social media, and digital animation. Bennani often exhibits her work in multisensory environments rather than on a single monitor or screen, exploring the new patterns of media consumption that have developed around smartphones and other portable devices. In the Biennial, she incorporates video into a large-scale installation she calls a "video viewing garden"—an environment comprising planters and futuristic, absurdist seating.
Pony Tail, 2019, screening MISSION TEENS: French school in Morocco, 2019
Installation view of the Whitney Biennial 2019 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 17-September 22, 2019). Meriem Bennani, Pony Tail, 2019, screening MISSION TEENS: French school in Morocco, 2019. Photograph by Ron Amstutz