BENKIRANE MERIAM

Lives and works in Casablanca, Morocco

Artist statement

I am a Moroccan artist, born in 1984 in Casablanca, where I still live and work. My practice combines oil painting and low-relief works on cellulosic wood panels. My work looks at the world we live in today and the way modern life shapes us. Cities are growing fast, technology is everywhere, and life feels accelerated. These changes affect how we think, how we feel, and how we connect with each other. They create both possibilities and difficulties: progress and efficiency on one side, but also disconnection, overload, and unease on the other. My work reflects on these contradictions and tries to give them a visible form. My paintings and reliefs are built as compositions of interwoven elements. I bring together human and humanoid figures, mechanical fragments, urban structures, and symbolic shapes that represent ideas such as hope, protection, quest, or blockage. These elements overlap and interact, creating visual landscapes that are both mental and physical. They show how the organic and the artificial live side by side, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict. When I create, I move between two ways of thinking. One is mechanical: fast, rational, and heavy with detail. The other is organic: intuitive, fluid, and guided by light and balance. The tension between these two states shapes my work, giving it both density and openness. Through painting and sculpture, I want to create spaces where viewers can pause, reflect, and recognize their own experience of living in...

Artwork