Assemble + Schools of Tomorrow: The Place We Imagine / Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS

Nottingham Contemporary is pleased to announce a major collaboration with Turner Prize-winning design collective Assemble and local children, and a solo exhibition and new commission by the Moroccan-born, New York-based artist Meriem Bennani.

Assemble + Schools of Tomorrow: The Place We Imagine
The Place We Imagine brings to life the Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi’s unrealised vision for a fantastical playground through a series of three large-scale play sculptures.

In 1968, Bo Bardi produced an evocative illustration of her design for the Museum of Art, São Paulo (MASP). Situated on a public plaza in front of the iconic museum, play structures are drawn at a vast scale—as though imagined by children, rather than an architect. This was important for Bo Bardi, who wrote: “the young will be the protagonists in the life of the museum through design, music and theatre.”

Bo Bardi’s utopian play-space was, however, never built. Drawn in the midst of the Brazilian dictatorship, this unrealised playground might be read as a way of exploring civic life under military rule, and the power of young imaginations in making alternative worlds. Today, her design prompts the questions: how might education and art galleries be rethought? What is the relationship between play and learning? And can play be a political act?

Over the past three years, Nottingham Contemporary has worked with Assemble and children from the “Schools of Tomorrow” programme—which includes eight schools across the city—to explore these questions and reimagine Bo Bardi’s vision across two galleries at Nottingham Contemporary. Assemble worked closely with resident artists and children at three schools, while engaging more broadly with the enquiries of the wider Schools of Tomorrow programme. Children’s actions, ideas and responses were at the heart of this conversation.

Two large-scale play sculptures have been directly inspired by Bo Bardi’s now-famous drawing, while a third has been designed in collaboration with these local schools. Assemble has created a design for and by the city’s children. At a moment when most playgrounds appear to be designed for the kinds of play that adults like to see children do, this project challenges the confines of the gallery space and its uses. It seeks to open up new ways of being in the museum, for children and adults alike.

Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS
Life on the CAPS explores a speculative future world set on the CAPS, a fictional island in the middle of the Atlantic. Here, biotechnology has enabled people to travel by teleportation, undergo radical age reversals and buy new bodies. In a world where borders are enforced by gigantic magnetic fields and a militant brigade of drone troopers, the exhibition imagines experiences of cultural displacement and longing, of resilience and perpetual transition. This is the first solo exhibition in a UK museum by the Moroccan-born, New York-based artist Meriem Bennani (b.1988, Rabat), featuring two chapters from a trilogy of films set on the CAPS. 

Bennani is a storyteller. Her work presents an amplified version of reality, punctuated by special effects, digital animation and music. She draws on reality TV, documentary, advertising, social media and phone footage, while questioning the ubiquity of digital technologies and the fracturing of identities within contemporary society.

The first chapter of the trilogy, Party on the CAPS (2018–19) captures an experience of dispossession and resilience in the Moroccan neighbourhood of the CAPS. The film depicts an isolated island community that grew out of a detention camp for refugees who were intercepted while attempting to teleport to the United States. The violence of interference mid-teleportation has left bodies in a complete quantum mess, and the reality of living with afflictions like “plastic face syndrome” unites all resident communities. Over three generations, the captive population of the swamp-rimmed island has developed into a bustling megalopolis.

The final chapter of the series, Life on the CAPS (2022), extends Bennani’s exploration of displacement, biotechnology and traditional forms of Moroccan music. The film interweaves an emerging narrative of collective protest and liberation with the personal story of Kamal, a 65-year-old man who has bought himself a new body. As Bennani has said, “It’s in a way political because he’s like, “I will live longer, maybe to see the day that the CAPS is liberated.’ Having a longer life span is being tied to lifelong political struggles.” The film culminates in revolt—a form of performance as protest—which invokes an ancient musical tradition of synchronised clapping and percussion called the deqqa. The score for the film was created by musician and producer Fatima Al Qadiri. 

Exhibition credits
Assemble + Schools of Tomorrow: The Place We Imagine is curated by Lisa Jacques, Amanda Spruyt and Nicole Yip, assisted by Niall Farrelly.

Developed in collaboration with
Jubilee L.E.A.D. Academy and artist Gillian Brent
Nottingham Nursery School and artist Sian W Taylor
Robin Hood Primary School and artist Laura Eldret

With additional contributions by
Edna G Olds L.E.A.D. Academy and artist Charlotte Tupper
Huntingdon L.E.A.D. Academy and artist Sian W Taylor
Melbury Primary School and artist Peter Rumney
The Milford Academy and artist Laura Eldret
Southwold Primary School and artist Charlotte Tupper

The “Big Red” is a co-commission with The Bentway, Toronto, where it was presented from June 19–September 26, 2021.

The exhibition is generously supported by Outset Contemporary Art Fund and the Ampersand Foundation. The Schools of Tomorrow programme is funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS is curated by Olivia Aherne and Nicole Yip.

The video Life on the CAPS (2022) is a co-commission with The Renaissance Society, Chicago, where it was presented from February 26–April 17, 2022.

The exhibition is generously supported by CLEARING, New York/Brussels.