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March 20 – April 19, 2025
2245 E Washington Blvd., Los Angeles

 FLY was first commissioned as an immersive video experience for Meriem Bennani’s first solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in 2016, imitating the mosaic structure of a fly’s eyes with a patchwork of projectors. As a single channel video, this work focuses more on the succession of sequences, shot in Bennani’s hometown of Rabat, showing interviews with relatives, an open-air market or a wedding, and jamming them with surreal digital manipulations. A recurrence throughout the film is a fly that accompanies us along the journey, as a childish motif or the symbol of a vanitas, able to sing Rihanna’s song. Bennani succeeds in emphasizing the contradictions and bizarreness of everyday life, often felt in situations of acculturation. In the scene featuring three wedding dancers — sheikhas — joyfully rolling on the floor, Bennani replaces the original traditional wedding music with Philipp Glass’ The Grid. Both cathartic and a way to create her own augmented universe, Meriem Bennani describes her work as a constant back and forth between documentation and magical realism.