Spring / Summer 2022 Exhibitions:
Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS
Assemble + Schools of Tomorrow: The Place We Imagine
3D Virtual Exhibitions

Nottingham Contemporary
Weekday Cross, Nottingham, NG1 2GB

Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS

Nottingham Contemporary presents Life on the CAPS, the New York-based Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani’s largest solo exhibition in the UK. Bennani’s acclaimed eight-channel video installation Party on the CAPS (2018–19) will be shown for the first time in the UK, alongside its newly commissioned sequel, Bennani’s most ambitious film to date. Bennani’s films follow the inhabitants of a fictional island in the middle of the Atlantic. Over three generations, what started as an internment camp on the island of the CAPS has developed into a bustling, geographically-isolated megalopolis where refugees and immigrants – who ‘illegally’ teleport across oceans and borders – are held by the state. The sequel – a collaboration with musician and producer Fatima Al Qadiri – continues Bennani’s exploration of displacement and biotechnology. Themes of privacy, protest and public gathering emerge through playful animation, with Bennani offering joy and humor as forms of resistance. Life on the CAPS (2022) is a co-commission with The Renaissance Society, Chicago where it will be presented 26 February – 17 April 2022.

Assemble + Schools of Tomorrow: The Place We Imagine

"A surreal delight... merry mayhem... bouncing between the play structures in euphoric disbelief that an art gallery could ever be so much fun" – Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian In 1968, the legendary Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi drew a fantastical playground. This colourful drawing imagines a series of vast structures in front of Museum of Art, São Paulo (MASP), which she had recently designed. They loom over the museum – 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”. This utopian play-space was, however, never built. Today, the unrealised design prompts the question: how might we reimagine galleries, play and education? More than three years in the making, in summer 2022 Nottingham Contemporary will collaborate with the design collective Assemble to bring Bo Bardi’s vision to life. Inspired by the architect’s now-famous drawing, this ambitious project will realise a series of large-scale play sculptures, one of which was developed in dialogue with children from three local schools. At each school Assemble worked closely with a resident artist and children over time to explore themes around play. Children’s actions, ideas and responses were at the heart of this conversation; Assemble have created a design for and by the city’s children. So, let’s go and play.