Meriem Bennani's Exploded Visions

Can art be funny and serious at the same time? Using social media-inspired effects, artist Meriem Bennani subverts audience expectations of both pop culture and her own Muslim community with unexpected playfulness and pathos. "I feel like I have a hard time connecting to anything that doesn’t have humor," says the artist, "because for me humor is like survival." Often exploring the private lives of Muslim women, Bennani strategically navigates the line between championing and exploiting the women who appear in her films, many of whom are family members, like in her documentary-style project "Ghariba/Stranger". " Meriem Bennani (b. 1988, Rabat, Morocco) lives and works in New York.