"Personally, I've never owned a pair of flip-flops. I actually really don't like them. I like seeing other people wear them, but I've never worn them myself. Flip-flops are so banal and ubiquitous - they're at the bottom of the fashion food chain - but that's part of what makes them interesting. I'm interested in protest dances, and flip-flops lend themselves to being used as a musical instrument, plus they're also so cartoonish in their movement."
"My dream workday is where I just have coffee, meander around, read things, watch things online, research -essentially learning new things. And then, through that, sometimes some threads start forming that end up being ideas. I haven't had that time for things to just naturally form in so long, but that's what I want to do next because otherwise, you can't make work."
Meriem Bennani creates installations and animations that pair playfulness with deeper commentary on identity, community, and cultural rhythms. Her 2 Lizards video series used cartoon animals to capture pandemic-era experiences and went viral. For My Best Family at Milan's Prada Foundation featured Sole Crushing, a pneumatic percussive orchestra of flip-flops producing immersive rhythms inspired by Moroccan musical traditions. Sole Crushing closed in February 2025 and will transfer to Paris's Lafayette Expectations until February 2026. Bennani was raised in Rabat, studied art in Paris, and lives in New York. She regards flip-flops as banal yet evocative instruments and values unstructured time for idea formation.
Read at Elite Traveler
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]