Meriem Bennani’s flip-flop orchestra during Art Basel Paris

For her latest solo exhibition, Sole Crushing, Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani orchestrates a radical reimagining of protest, procession, and public intimacy through the most ordinary of objects. The building itself becomes a resonating chamber, filled not with voices or instruments, but with over two hundred rubber sandals—striking, slapping, tapping in choreographed rebellion.

“I had this image in my mind,” Bennani reflects, “of a thousand flip-flops shaking the ground—something between a crowd at a football match and a street protest. That pulse, that noise, is emotional architecture. It gets into your body.” This synesthetic vision has evolved into a monumental sound installation, spreading across the vertical expanse of the Fondation Galeries Lafayette like a living, sonic organism.

Originally conceived for For My Best Family at Fondazione Prada, this new iteration of Sole Crushing responds directly to the unique verticality of Lafayette Anticipations. The footwear is transformed into a percussive ensemble, animated through mechanical choreography and paired with a newly composed soundtrack by Reda Senhaji, also known as Cheb Runner. “He’s from Agadir and now lives in Belgium,” Bennani says. “He brings deep knowledge of North African rhythms—how they loop, fragment, build. There’s a long history of reinvention in raï, in chaabi, in mahraganat. It’s always porous to tech, to politics. That’s something I really connect with.”

Indeed, porousness lies at the heart of Bennani’s practice. Known for her genre-hacking video installations that blend science fiction with documentary, satire with sincerity, she has long examined diasporic identity, power, and media with a style that is both playful and sharply observant. Here, with Sole Crushing, she turns her gaze to the dynamics of the crowd: its unity, its fragmentation, its beauty, and its danger.

“There’s something visceral about being in a group,” she explains. “In a protest, or a traditional dakka marrakchia ceremony, you feel part of a single force. It’s deeply moving. But group dynamics can also go dark—fascism is a group story too. I’m not trying to comment directly. I want to recreate that emotional texture, that suspended moment where people know how to be together.”

The result is a score performed not by humans, but by shoes—objects that are as humble as they are symbolically loaded. “Flip-flops are global. They’re mass-produced, minimal, ephemeral. But they’re also beautiful. Their flexibility reminds me of cartoons—stretchy, subversive, elastic. They’re anti-structure,” Bennani says. “It’s the shoe that hit Bush in Iraq. It’s defiance and humor at once.”

This tension between humor and gravity is key to Bennani’s political language. She resists didacticism, opting instead for absurdity as an invitation. “Seriousness and absurdity—they’re both survival techniques,” she says. “The most serious things in life often feel absurd. And the absurd lets people in—it softens the surface, creates space for thought.”

That softness can be deceiving. While the installation is filled with whimsy—sandals flapping like castanets, rhythms echoing through architectural cavities—Sole Crushing invites serious reflection on resistance, migration, collective identity, and the fragility of togetherness in a world increasingly defined by fragmentation. “I’m always drawn to the moment where the personal meets the collective,” Bennani says. “When you’re in a crowd, you stop being entirely yourself. There’s catharsis, but also surrender.”

In a world where social rituals are increasingly mediated, commodified, or policed, Bennani’s vibrating chorus of rubber soles becomes both memorial and prophecy. It hums with the ghosts of protests past and trembles with the potential of those yet to come.

As always, Bennani resists finality. “I like being surprised by how people react,” she says. “Once it’s out in the world, it’s not mine anymore—it’s theirs.” In that spirit, Sole Crushing invites visitors not just to watch or listen, but to feel. To be inside the noise. To lose themselves in the beat of a collective pulse—comic, tragic, and uncannily alive.

Meriem Bennani’s work will be shown by François Ghebaly, Sadie Coles HQ, and Lodovico Corsini at Art Basel Paris at Booth 1.L7, Booth Number 0.B41, and Booth 1.K8, respectively, and is on show at Lafayette Anticipations until 8 February 2026.