Must-See: Meriem Bennani’s Flip-Flop Orchestra

This review is part of a series of Must-See shows, in which a writer delivers a snapshot of a current exhibition

Dozens of motorized flip-flops and slippers slap against metal and wooden platforms, the sound rising and falling in an intricate choreography that builds to cacophonous waves before dulling to a quiet hush. During the 45 minutes of Meriem Bennani’s Sole Crushing (2024), this playful orchestra of 192 assorted items of footwear waggle and bounce as they strike the platforms they are placed on, thanks to a complex compressed-air system that brings them to life. Sometimes the flip-flops and slippers behave like a single, loud instrument; sometimes they overlap each other to create an overwhelming polyphonic arrangement. There are moments when the rhythmic slapping sounds recognizably like music before it descends, once more, into an indistinguishable thunder of noise. What is most striking about this work, however, is the animistic quality the footwear exudes as it pulses up and down, seeming almost to breathe. 

Presented on the ground floor of Bennani’s current exhibition at Fondazione Prada, Milan, this work is arranged on six different platforms spread throughout the gallery. The ‘score’ for Sole Crushing – co-written by the artist and musician Cheb Runner – is infused with motifs from Moroccan and North African musical traditions, such as the dakka marrakchia, in which movement and percussion chase each other in a form of collective ecstasy. The entire installation provides a reflection on how to work together, with each item of footwear part of a collective that, when it moves in synchronicity, makes engaging music.

In an upstairs gallery, the feature-length animated film For Aicha (2024) provides a more intimate, psychological landscape. Made with a group of collaborators – including Orian Barki, John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs – For Aicha follows Bouchra, a 3D-rendered, chain-smoking jackal-filmmaker, as she explores the impact of her queerness on her complex, long-distance relationship with her mother. Bouchra, each time life and emotion collide, needs a spurt of Ventolin to breathe and reconnect to her own body and surroundings. Both collaborative works, Sole Crushing and For Aicha remind me that, while breathing may mark the pace of our individual lives, breathing together allows us to feel part of a community.

Meriem Bennani’s ‘For My Best Family’ is on view at Fondazione Prada, Milan, until 26 February 

^{Main image: Meriem Bennani, Sole Crushing, 2024, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Fondazione Prada; photograph: Delfino Sisto Legani}